Degree Name
MA (Master of Arts)
Program
English
Date of Award
5-2018
Committee Chair or Co-Chairs
Theresa McGarry
Committee Members
Phyllis Thompson, Thomas Alan Holmes
Abstract
Inspired by her obsession with the South and informed by the liberating socio-political changes born from the 1970s lesbian feminist movement, North Carolinian author Bertha Harris (1937-2005) provides a poetic exploration of Southern Gothic Sapphism in her complex and tormented novel Confessions of Cherubino (1972). Despite fleeting second-wave era recognition as “one of the most stylistically innovative American fiction writers to emerge since Stonewall,” Harris’s innovation remains largely neglected by readers and cultural theorists alike. Nearly all academic engagements with her work, of which there are few, address her 1976 novel Lover. Instead, this thesis focuses on Confessions of Cherubino and examines the novel’s relationship to poststructural feminist thought that led to a critical but undervalued position within contemporary literature of the queer South, particularly through the work of Dorothy Allison, who has noted Harris’s influence on her writing.
Document Type
Thesis - unrestricted
Recommended Citation
Russell, Kara, "Bertha Harris' Confessions of Cherubino: From L'Ecriture Feminine to the Gothic South" (2018). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 3401. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/3401
Copyright
Copyright by the authors.