Women and Distorted Realities: Remembering and Reinventing “The Lady of Shalott”

Detraux Ramírez, América
Herrero Granado, María Dolores (dir.)

Universidad de Zaragoza, FFYL, 2015
Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana, Área de Filología Inglesa

Graduado en Estudios Ingleses

Resumen: This dissertation analyses the treatment of three different aspects of interest in the novel Tirra Lirra by the River, by the Australian novelist Jessica Anderson. Firstly, this paper will aim to carry out a comprehensive study of the impact that the use of intertextuality has on the novel, as well as to provide an explanation for the different uses that the novel makes of it. Secondly, it will examine the novel’s representation of women’s difficult condition and female artists’ problems during the first decades of the twentieth century; and thirdly, it will tackle the importance of trauma, mainly as reflected in the figure of the protagonist, Nora Porteous. Jessica Anderson, like her novel’s main female character, was strongly marked and influenced by the past, and strove to bring to the fore in her works her own conceptions of art, life and reality, as well as her own personal frights and concerns about the society she had to live in. In order to carry out this analysis, support my arguments and strengthen my conclusions I have relied on a number of papers and book chapters written on this novel by well-known Australian critics. All in all, I conclude that Tirra Lirra by the River is a most interesting and complex novel, as regards both its modernist formal features and its treatment of contemporary polemical themes and their societal implications.

Tipo de Trabajo Académico: Trabajo Fin de Grado