Tauris Transformations
2 total works
This work seeks to uncover the veiled structures of language and society that have situated women in an "imaginary zone", a zone of exclusion. It is an exploration and a dialogue between its two authors, and an exposition of Cixous's influential strategy of "ecriture feminine". Through their readings of historical, literary, psychoanalytical texts, presenting the sorceress, the hysteric, the Tarantella, Penthesileia and Cleopatra among many others, Cixous and Clement explore what is hidden and repressed in culture.
This work concentrates on the texts and narratives of more than 30 major operas, analyzing their cultural implications in demonstrating how they have contributed to the construction of a popularized feminine identity. It shows, for example, how 19th-century opera perpetuates a social order which requires either the death or the domestication of the female protagonist.