Cardiff University | Prifysgol Caerdydd ORCA
Online Research @ Cardiff 
WelshClear Cookie - decide language by browser settings

Reading the Victorian Gypsy.

Matthews, Jodie Claire 2008. Reading the Victorian Gypsy. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University.

[thumbnail of U585073.pdf] PDF - Accepted Post-Print Version
Download (9MB)

Abstract

Nineteenth-century texts that focus on Gypsies construct a figure who ought to be locatable in a racial hierarchy, in a class system, and along gender lines. When read psychoanalytically, however, the texts reveal signs of having repressed uncertainty about where such boundaries may be drawn and what they signify. The figure of the Gypsy, existing literally and metaphorically on the verges of society, disrupts the stable locations of identity fenced off by discourse even as texts hope to offer the Gypsy as an example of how one may categorise others. Chapter One studies the figure of the Gypsy in the work of Walter Scott (1771–1832) and its relationship to that of a later writer, George Borrow (1803–1881). Chapter Two concentrates on the work of the Romany Ryes, examining the discursive implications of their impulse to conserve Gypsy culture in the face of its perceived annihilation. Chapter Three explores the construction of the Gypsy between engraved image and written text in the 'Illustrated London News', reading the ways in which the two forms work together on the page. Chapter Four looks at George Eliot's 'The Spanish Gypsy' (1868) and '' Daniel Deronda' (1876) to examine the differences in the representation of a male Jew and female Gypsy in her work. The final chapter discusses the pervasive stereotype of Gypsies kidnapping children in the context of children's literature. The readings performed throughout the thesis are underpinned by a deconstructive psychoanalysis (drawing on Jacques Derrida's rethinking of the work of Sigmund Freud), which not only lends the project a methodology but demands an exploration of the ethics and responsibilities of reading and writing now, in the past, and for the future The texts are thus under analysis and are seen to preserve traces of the nineteenth-century discourses in which they are woven (and which they also weave). Such conservation also always institutes a difference, however, and the attempted repression, silencing, banishment and fetishization of all the uncontained features of the figure of the Gypsy do not mean that the text has the Gypsy under control all of these things come back to haunt it.

Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
Status: Unpublished
Schools: English, Communication and Philosophy
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races
P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism
P Language and Literature > PR English literature
ISBN: 9781303212840
Funders: AHRC, Cardiff University
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 30 March 2016
Last Modified: 19 Mar 2016 23:30
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/54684

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item Edit Item

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics