Abstract

This dissertation seeks to define a Feminist Cosmology through an analysis of the poetry of Emily Bronte and Emily Dickinson. These poets were chosen for their recognized genius as two of the greatest female writers in the English language, and because they were of great personal importance to the formation of my own poetic method. Both their process of transformation from an alienated patriarchal cosmos to a feminist cosmos, and their final vision of that cosmology is explored to provide a lens through which to look more closely at my own novel, The Man Eater, which forms a part of this dissertation. "Cosmology" here is defined as a control system which appeals to ultimate principles about the nature of the cosmos, interacts with speech and ritual, and is characterized by consistency of coding between the social and religious spheres. Just as gender is a social construct, so cosmological symbolism and its concomitant religious symbolism is a product of a particular cultural construct which affects both social organization, values, and the meanings with which the female body and its relationship to the cosmos is endowed