Modernism’s Mythic Mothers: Queering Motherhood Through Classical Matrilineage

Samantha Lepak's dissertation Modernism's Mythic Mothers: Queering Motherhood Through Classical Matrilineage focuses on the Modernist poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) and her rewritings of Greek mythology that center women, particularly mothers. By writing on this mythology’s women, and by being a woman writer herself, H.D. marks a significant deviation from the male-dominated literary traditions surrounding her which designated the classical world as reserved for men. A classical patrilineage is replaced by matrilineage, with this dissertation arguing H.D.’s role as a mythical mother herself while additionally exploring H.D. in relation to queer theory and concepts of temporality.