... who laughed very heartily at the manner in which she told the story , and to her no small mortification , instead of taking the pistol from Theodóra , as she had requested he would do , he said he was glad to find she had so good a ...
Author: Dorothea Du Bois
Publisher:
ISBN: BL:A0023418961
Category:
Page: 254
View: 779
The novel's first-person narrator, Cecil, struggles to describe Theodora's ambiguous gen- der identity: “She's so queer ... she's got a mous- tache” (Cross 10), “it would spoil most women I know, but it doesn't seem to spoil her” (Cross ...
Author: Lesa Scholl
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9783030783181
Category: Literary Criticism
Page: 1753
View: 249
Since the late twentieth century, there has been a strategic campaign to recover the impact of Victorian women writers in the field of English literature. However, with the increased understanding of the importance of interdisciplinarity in the twenty-first century, there is a need to extend this campaign beyond literary studies in order to recognise the role of women writers across the nineteenth century, a time that was intrinsically interdisciplinary in approach to scholarly writing and public intellectual engagement.Within the novel these extremes are the only options offered; there is no middle ground, no vantage point from which we can put both Theodora and the earthbound characters into a proper perspective. Whenever there are hints that such a ...
Author: Laurence Steven
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 9780889205925
Category: Literary Criticism
Page: 175
View: 794
Most studies of Patrick White's fiction are devoted to elucidating archetypal patterns, symbolic configurations, and thematic preoccupations, and generally to praising the way White's fictional elements combine to form a religio-mystical worldview. Few have questioned this critical approach to White; fewer still have questioned White's vision itself. Yet, according to the author, questioning is in order—for Patrick White is a man divided. One part of him strives for permanence, for the ideal, in a world he knows is contingent and temporal, a world that will undermine his striving. This leads him as a novelist to devalue human life and to impose arbitrary, symbolic resolutions on his novels. This has been the focus of most critics. But there is another side, a part of White that strains away from the dualism of idealism versus despair and towards a vital wholeness that can be found, not in a world beyond the one we live in, but in human relationships. It is this side of Patrick White, argues Laurence Steven, that is the source of his genuine power as a novelist. An important challenge for the critic is "to develop an ability to see, within the restrictive compass [White's] symbolic designs impose on the novels, 'the new shoots,' as [D. H.] Lawrence would have it, which indicate new life, new creativity, and which point towards a wholeness which human beings can embrace as their own" (Introduction).Justinian took a wife: and the manner she was born and bred, and wedded to this man, tore up the Roman Empire by the very roots' Procopius Charming, charismatic, heroic - Theodora of Constantinople rose from nothing to become the most ...
Author: Stella Duffy
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 9780748126590
Category: Fiction
Page: 352
View: 919
Justinian took a wife: and the manner she was born and bred, and wedded to this man, tore up the Roman Empire by the very roots' Procopius Charming, charismatic, heroic - Theodora of Constantinople rose from nothing to become the most powerful woman in the history of Byzantine Rome. In Stella Duffy's breathtaking new novel, she comes to life again - a fascinating, controversial and seductive woman. Some called her a saint. Others were not so kind... When her father is killed, the young Theodora is forced into near slavery to survive. But just as she learns to control her body as a dancer, and for the men who can afford her, so she is determined to shape a very different fate for herself. From the vibrant streets and erotic stage shows of sixth century Constantinople to the holy desert retreats of Alexandria, Theodora is an extraordinary imaginative achievement from one of our finest writers.Where Theodora went, trouble followed….
Author: Stephanie Thornton
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 9780451417787
Category: Fiction
Page: 0
View: 175
Where Theodora went, trouble followed…. In sixth-century Constantinople, one woman, Theodora, defied every convention and all the odds and rose from common theater tart to empress of a great kingdom, the most powerful woman the Roman Empire would ever know. The woman whose image was later immortalized in glittering mosaic was a scrappy, clever, conniving, flesh-and-blood woman full of sensuality and spirit whose real story is as surprising as any ever told…. After her father dies suddenly, Theodora and her sisters face starvation and a life on the streets. Determined to survive, Theodora makes a living any way she can—first on her back with every man who will have her, then on the stage in a scandalous dramatization of her own invention. When her daring performance grants her a backdoor entry into the halls of power, she seizes the chance to win a wealthy protector—only to face heartbreak and betrayal. Ever resilient, Theodora rises above such trials and, by a twist of fate, meets her most passionate admirer yet: the emperor’s nephew. She thrives as his confidant and courtesan, but many challenges lie ahead. For one day this man will hand her a crown. And all the empire will wonder—is she bold enough, shrewd enough, and strong enough to keep it? READERS GUIDE INCLUDEDThe novel, for all its criticisms of Australian superficiality, shows a real affection for Australian vitality. ... Theodora Goodman's childhood and family life rely very much on White's own experience, and the central section of the ...
Author: Susan Lever
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781000248074
Category: Literary Criticism
Page: 256
View: 576
In the years since the Second World War, Australia has seen a period of literary creativity which outshines any earlier period in the nation's literary history. This creativity has its beginnings in the arguments and alignments which emerged at the end of the War, and the changes in perceptions of art and society which occurred during the fifties and early sixties. A Question of Commitment examines the attitudes of writers as diverse as James McAuley, Frank Hardy, Judith Wright, Patrick White and A. D. Hope, as they responded to a changing Australian society during the postwar years. Through their work and that of many others, it considers the debates about literary nationalism, the artistic politics of the Cold War, the threat of technology to art in the Atomic Age, and the nature of the writer's role in the new society. It documents the way in which the political commitments of some writers and the resistance to commitment of others were challenged by political and social changes of the late fifties. Susan McKernan's lively exploration of Australia's writers in a time of innovation provides the reader with the context needed to understand the creative choices they made and, in so doing, introduces wider intellectual and cultural issues which remain relevant to this day.Morelltookthe story from a historical novel,The Martyrdom of Theodora andDidymus by Robert Boyle (16271691), which appeared in 1667. The original novel isboth unctuous andgory. Boyle'sheroine, Theodora,108withher beauty,her secret ...
Author: Paul Henry Lang
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 9780486144597
Category: Music
Page: 784
View: 730
Exceptionally full, detailed study of the man, his music and times. Childhood, music training, years in London; analysis of Messiah and other works; much more. Introduction. Includes 35 illustrations.73 “April Showers” features a provincial young woman named Theodora who has written a novel. Its final line, “But Guy's heart slept under the violets on Muriel's grave,” is, she believes, “a beautiful ending.”74 The story depicts the ...
Author: Emily Orlando
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 9781350182950
Category: Literary Criticism
Page: 629
View: 719
Bringing together leading voices from across the globe, The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edith Wharton represents state-of-the-art scholarship on the American writer Edith Wharton, once primarily known as a New York novelist. Focusing on Wharton's extensive body of work and renaissance across 21st-century popular culture, chapters consider: - Wharton in the context of queer studies, race studies, whiteness studies, age studies, disability studies, anthropological studies, and economics; - Wharton's achievements in genres for which she deserves to be better known: poetry, drama, the short story, and non-fiction prose; - Comparative studies with Christina Rossetti, Henry James, and Willa Cather; -The places and cultures Wharton documented in her writing, including France, Greece, Italy, and Morocco; - Wharton's work as a reader and writer and her intersections with film and the digital humanities. Book-ended by Dale Bauer and Elaine Showalter, and with a foreword by the Director and senior staff at The Mount, Wharton's historic Massachusetts home, the Handbook underscores Wharton's lasting impact for our new Gilded Age. It is an indispensable resource for readers interested in Wharton and 19th- and 20th-century literature and culture.Before we first meet her in the novel, Theodora is indirectly introduced in Chapter 1 by a man, Cecil's friend Digby. Digby tells Cecil about meeting Theodora and presents her as a potential great marriage match for Cecil, ...
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004313378
Category: Literary Criticism
Page: 283
View: 174
This volume demonstrates the significance middlebrow writing had for the dissemination of new concepts of gender to wider audiences. By exploring the media culture between 1890 and 1930 it gives evidence of the relative proximity between middlebrow writers and the avant-garde in their concern for gender issues.This scholarly edition of Du Bois's novel introduces readers to a unique voice in women's writing of the eighteenth century that has been undeservedly dismissed by literary history for far too long.
Author: Dorothea Du Bois
Publisher:
ISBN: 0367714213
Category:
Page: 216
View: 413
Theodora, A Novel by Dorothea Du Bois, published in 1770, is an entertaining and frequently shocking tale of a young woman's efforts to regain her position in high society after her aristocratic father's abandonment of and denial of marriage to her mother. The two-volume work is a thinly-veiled fictionalisation of Du Bois's eventful personal history and the novel represents just one prong of what was a very public campaign to assert what she believed was her rightful place among the nobility of Ireland and Britain. Central to the narrative of Theodora is the powerlessness of women in the face of a system, moral, social and legal, that was designed to enshrine and protect patriarchal interests. In this manner Theodora exposes the gross injustices of eighteenth century society. This scholarly edition of Du Bois's novel introduces readers to a unique voice in women's writing of the eighteenth century that has been undeservedly dismissed by literary history for far too long.