Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

6-2026

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

French

Advisor

Morena Corradi

Committee Members

Rachel Corkle

Ali Nematollahy

Maxime Blanchard

Subject Categories

French and Francophone Literature | Other French and Francophone Language and Literature

Keywords

nineteenth-century French literature, fantastic literature, female vampire, monstrous feminine, abjection, commodity fetishism

Abstract

This dissertation examines the féminin-fantastique in nineteenth-century French literature, arguing that supernatural female figures—vampires, animated objects, and revenantes—form a symbolic system through which the century negotiates anxieties surrounding sexuality, materiality, subjectivity, capitalism, mortality, and historical memory. Drawing on theoretical frameworks including Julia Kristeva’s concept of abjection, Barbara Creed’s monstrous-feminine, Marxist analyses of commodity fetishism, Freudian mourning, Derridean hauntology, and Georges Bataille’s theory of eroticism, the study analyzes works by Gautier, Féval, Mérimée, Maupassant, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, and Nodier. Through three thematic axes—the female vampire, the animation of feminine objects, and the female revenant—the dissertation demonstrates how the supernatural feminine destabilizes boundaries between subject and object, sacred and profane, life and death, and desire and prohibition. By reframing the fantastic female figure as a dynamic symbolic structure rather than a decorative trope, the study argues that supernatural femininity functions as both symptom and critique of nineteenth-century cultural epistemologies.

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