Date of Award

6-11-2025

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

English

First Advisor

Suzanne Bost

Abstract

I position this dissertation at the intersection of modern/contemporary literature, queer/feminist theory, and ancient Greek classics in the hopes of better understanding the spaces in which they meet, engaging with writers from the late modernist era to the present in order to highlight the connections between theories, themes, and practices of queerness from the modernists forward. Using the work of H.D. and writers following in her footsteps, I argue that exploring adaptations of Greek classics written primarily by female and gender-variant authors from the modernist era forward illuminates the extent to which the classics enables writers to “think queerly,” considering critical inquiry and experience to interrogate questions of gender and sexuality. I queer motherhood by seeing it as a method of literary inheritance and following a literary genealogy backward to ancient women ancestors and forward to future descendants who follow the same patterns that their foremothers have set for them. Both queer views of motherhood enable rethinking the masculinist use of Greek allusion and focus on the inheritance of a literary tradition that is otherwise passed on through the line of the father. I argue instead for a model of lineage that follows women and mothers in order to queer the discourse with a subverted perspective and focus. Using queer theory as a mode of inquiry, I propose that re-telling ancient myths to queer ideas of matrilineage, both forward- and backward-looking, enables authors to decenter the masculinist perspective in favor of a non-male perspective of cyclical counterhistory.

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