“George Sand (and Me)” A Poetic Auto/biography and Dissertation

Interrogating and reflecting on my creative writing practice, this thesis identifies three interwoven drivers of said practice: feminist politics; poetic biographical form; and writing process (using a particular methodology, namely synchronicity). My research asks: how can these three drivers intersect and resonate to inform and guide both my research encounters with an underappreciated nineteenth-century literary figure, prolific French novelist and social radical George Sand, and my feminist project of restitution, embodied in my poetic biography of her? And how can autotheoretical approaches to poetic life writing refresh the biography genre? Inflected with ‘reparative’ aesthetics, my ‘poetics of restitution’, through both creative and critical work explores the life and work of Sand whose progressive social, political, and ecological views have much to offer our own times of upheaval. Furthering the aims of second wave feminism to bring ‘forgotten’ women writers to prominence, I use braided creative and critical writing to position Sand within a lineage of creative (literary) women of accomplishment. The critical component blends personal reflection and narrative in a feminist autotheory approach to examine each of my research domains. I propose ‘synchronicity methodology’ as an embodied, affective mode of receptiveness, for guidance in creative writing. The notion of the ‘line’ is applied as a cohering metaphor across and within each of my three research domains – respectively. This is in relation to the feminist restoration of creative women’s lineages , employing the idea of poetic biography as lineated ‘lifeline’, and through aleatory ‘lines of connection’ between myself and the world (synchronicity and serendipity). ‘The line’ weaves into and out of chapters, making transverse connections, sewing pieces together. In keeping with ‘reparative’ aesthetics, I illustrate ways in which “practitioners bind their own pathways or lines of becoming into the texture of the world” to make contributions to their communities of practice.