Date of Award
1-1-2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D. in English
First Advisor
Jaime Harker
Second Advisor
Monika Bhagat-Kennedy
Third Advisor
Ann Fisher-Wirth
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
The Third Ethos responds to the call put forth by sexuality studies for more extensive research into asexualities as a burgeoning field of identity and modality. At the same time, it furthers recent literary scholarship that locates the origins of modernism in earlier aesthetic movements such as symbolism, decadence, and aestheticism, underscoring the influence of modernization on artistic output during the fin de siècle while concurrently contributing to the development of Decadent studies. Analyzing Rachilde’s La Jongleuse, Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!, and Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes, I argue that the Western sociocultural understanding of sex that existed in the first decades of the twentieth century existed alongside an often neglected language used to articulate nonsexually abundant means of being that, in some cases, could more intuitively meet the needs of a modernizing global society.
I demonstrate how these ace-hospitable texts employ decadent formal and narrative maneuvers to challenge, renegotiate, and in some instances, sustain heteropatriarchal capitalist mores. I reexamine decadence, frequently associated with sexual deviance and reclusion, as a mode complex enough to also include sexual defiance (or a rejection of/disinclination toward the sexual) and queer community building. As such, decadence recovers an asexual discourse that illuminates subjectivities separate from the sexual; decadence spotlights the damage incurred by coerced sexuality while projecting more inclusive forms of communion, connection, and exchange. This study thus aims to contribute to sexuality studies as well as literary studies by modeling a range of asexual analyses of literary texts and demonstrating how decadent techniques can be used to unearth asexual alterities.
Recommended Citation
Kotel, Kimberly Allyn, "The Third Ethos: Asexual Potentialities in Transnational Literature between 1900-1926" (2024). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2829.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/2829