Kononenko T.P. Representation of Gender Issues in the British Women's Writing of the Last Quarter of the 20th Century (Angela Carter, Fay Weldon, and Jeanette Winterson). - Manuscript.

Thesis for Ph. D. in Philology, specialization 10.01.04 - Foreign Literature. Taras Shevchenko Literature Institute at the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, Kyiv, 2008.

The dissertation analyses tendencies of critical revision and reinterpretation of various aspects of gender asymmetry reflected in the writings of contemporary British women writers. In view of existing connection between their prose and literary tradition of female Gothic, research considers the ways of modification of Gothic discourse and methods of strengthening its deconstructive potential applied in the feminist literature.

Channeled through the Gothic mode were ideas of woman's liberation and reforming of gender sphere. Artistic experiments of selected authors frequently introduced fantastic widening of choices for woman's self-fulfillment, daring breaks of a spell of patriarchal past. Attempts of the featured writers to destabilize the patriarchal discourse envisaged provocative transgressions that permeated various levels, including those of cultural norms, corporality, and narration. Central to the plots of many novels comes to be a picaresque type of female rebel endowed with unique features and abilities represented by a she-devil, a giantess, a flying woman or an androgyne. Androgyny of female characters contributes to visualization of the fluid gender identity and at the same time demonstrates the idea of multiplicity of social roles open for women. A pronounced inclination towards fantastic transformation of reality also uncovers coherent intentions of contemporary female Gothic and magic realism. Besides, gothic discourse at the given stage happens to be interrelated with surrealism (as exemplified in Carter's novels) and science fiction (inscribed in some Weldon's novels) that account for reinforcement of its critical potential.

Study of literary works and essays by Carter, Weldon and Winterson revealed correlations between British literary proposal and (post) feminist ideas (H. Cixous, J. Kristeva, J. Butler, R. Braidotti) as well as some postmodernist ideas (including those of J. - F. Lyotard, J. Baudrillard, M. Foucout, S. Ћiћek). The thesis also identifies the key elements that constitute individual profile of each woman writer, in particular, adaptation of surrealist experience in Carter's intellectual prose; intentional controversy of Weldon's feminism; practicing of a spiral narrative and postmodern Romanticism of Winterson.

Analysis of the literary works written from 1970s till the end of the 20^th century brings to a conclusion about gradual departure of the analyzed British authors from radical feminism and their re-orientation to reversal of gender polarities together with a move towards exploring multiple existential possibilities and fluid gender identity conceptualized in gender studies of the 1990s.

Although revision of cultural construction exemplified in the writings of selected British women writers was to remain an unfinished project, its overall effect and significance was considerable and catalyzed modifications in the gender paradigm.

Key words: reinterpretation, gender asymmetry, female Gothic, Gothic discourse, feminism, gender identity.

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