Alexa Alfer
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719066528
- eISBN:
- 9781781701751
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719066528.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This comprehensive study of A. S. Byatt's work spans virtually her entire career and offers readings of all of her works of fiction up to and including her Man-Booker-shortlisted novel The Children's ...
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This comprehensive study of A. S. Byatt's work spans virtually her entire career and offers readings of all of her works of fiction up to and including her Man-Booker-shortlisted novel The Children's Book (2009). The chapters combine an overview of Byatt's œuvre to date with close critical analysis of all her major works. The book also considers Byatt's critical writings and journalism, situating her beyond the immediate context of her fiction. The chapters argue that Byatt is not only important as a storyteller, but also as an eminent critic and public intellectual. Advancing the concept of ‘critical storytelling’ as a hallmark of Byatt's project as a writer, the chapters retrace Byatt's wide-ranging engagement with both literary and critical traditions. This results in positioning Byatt in the wider literary landscape.Less
This comprehensive study of A. S. Byatt's work spans virtually her entire career and offers readings of all of her works of fiction up to and including her Man-Booker-shortlisted novel The Children's Book (2009). The chapters combine an overview of Byatt's œuvre to date with close critical analysis of all her major works. The book also considers Byatt's critical writings and journalism, situating her beyond the immediate context of her fiction. The chapters argue that Byatt is not only important as a storyteller, but also as an eminent critic and public intellectual. Advancing the concept of ‘critical storytelling’ as a hallmark of Byatt's project as a writer, the chapters retrace Byatt's wide-ranging engagement with both literary and critical traditions. This results in positioning Byatt in the wider literary landscape.
Alexa Alfer and Amy J. Edwards de Campos
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719066528
- eISBN:
- 9781781701751
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719066528.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This introductory chapter discusses A. S. Byatt, a writer with a personal and intellectual dislike of literary criticism that places a heavy emphasis on a writer's life. It first provides some ...
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This introductory chapter discusses A. S. Byatt, a writer with a personal and intellectual dislike of literary criticism that places a heavy emphasis on a writer's life. It first provides some background information on Byatt's early career as a writer and her debut novel, Shadow of a Sun. It studies her commitment to the mutually informative discourses of fiction and literary criticism and her popular reimaginings of the Victorian past. This chapter also studies some of Byatt's novels, which are discussed in detail in the following chapters.Less
This introductory chapter discusses A. S. Byatt, a writer with a personal and intellectual dislike of literary criticism that places a heavy emphasis on a writer's life. It first provides some background information on Byatt's early career as a writer and her debut novel, Shadow of a Sun. It studies her commitment to the mutually informative discourses of fiction and literary criticism and her popular reimaginings of the Victorian past. This chapter also studies some of Byatt's novels, which are discussed in detail in the following chapters.
Max Saunders
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199579761
- eISBN:
- 9780191722882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579761.003.0013
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This shorter chapter is a coda considering the afterlife of modernism's engagements with life‐writings covered in Part II. It begins by sketching how the ideas traced in this study of imaginary ...
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This shorter chapter is a coda considering the afterlife of modernism's engagements with life‐writings covered in Part II. It begins by sketching how the ideas traced in this study of imaginary portraiture, imaginary self‐portraiture, and aesthetic autobiography figure in experiments in life‐writing by two authors coming after modernism: Jean‐Paul Sartre in Les Mots, and Vladimir Nabokov in Speak, Memory. The second section sketches ways in which postmodernism has drawn upon and extended the tradition of experimentations with life‐writing. Here the emphasis is on metafictional strategies, especially those of auto/biografiction and imaginary authorship. Auto/biografiction can be understood as a strand of what Linda Hutcheon defines as ‘historiographic metafiction’, focusing on the representations of individual life stories rather than on representations of historical crises or trauma. Modernist works explicitly thematizing their own processes of representation (such as Orlando or The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas) are reconsidered as pioneers of the postmodern development that might be termed ‘auto/biographic metafiction’. Key examples discussed are A. S. Byatt's Possession (as biographic metafiction); Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook (as autobiographic metafiction) and Nabokov's Pale Fire (as auto/biographic metafiction). Where historiographic metafiction represents a postmodernizing of the historical novel, auto/biographic metafiction represents a postmodernizing of auto/biography.Less
This shorter chapter is a coda considering the afterlife of modernism's engagements with life‐writings covered in Part II. It begins by sketching how the ideas traced in this study of imaginary portraiture, imaginary self‐portraiture, and aesthetic autobiography figure in experiments in life‐writing by two authors coming after modernism: Jean‐Paul Sartre in Les Mots, and Vladimir Nabokov in Speak, Memory. The second section sketches ways in which postmodernism has drawn upon and extended the tradition of experimentations with life‐writing. Here the emphasis is on metafictional strategies, especially those of auto/biografiction and imaginary authorship. Auto/biografiction can be understood as a strand of what Linda Hutcheon defines as ‘historiographic metafiction’, focusing on the representations of individual life stories rather than on representations of historical crises or trauma. Modernist works explicitly thematizing their own processes of representation (such as Orlando or The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas) are reconsidered as pioneers of the postmodern development that might be termed ‘auto/biographic metafiction’. Key examples discussed are A. S. Byatt's Possession (as biographic metafiction); Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook (as autobiographic metafiction) and Nabokov's Pale Fire (as auto/biographic metafiction). Where historiographic metafiction represents a postmodernizing of the historical novel, auto/biographic metafiction represents a postmodernizing of auto/biography.
Cora Kaplan
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748611478
- eISBN:
- 9780748651627
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748611478.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter discusses the middlebrow Victoriana, which depends neither on intrusive authorial presence nor on over-elaborate imitation. It covers the shifting history, politics and aesthetics of ...
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This chapter discusses the middlebrow Victoriana, which depends neither on intrusive authorial presence nor on over-elaborate imitation. It covers the shifting history, politics and aesthetics of postwar fictional Victoriana. Several key novels are examined, including those by A.S. Byatt, Sarah Waters and John Fowles. These novels have become commercial and critical successes, and also highlight the uneasy relationship of historical fiction between the present and the Victorian past.Less
This chapter discusses the middlebrow Victoriana, which depends neither on intrusive authorial presence nor on over-elaborate imitation. It covers the shifting history, politics and aesthetics of postwar fictional Victoriana. Several key novels are examined, including those by A.S. Byatt, Sarah Waters and John Fowles. These novels have become commercial and critical successes, and also highlight the uneasy relationship of historical fiction between the present and the Victorian past.
Mary Jacobus
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184348
- eISBN:
- 9780191674211
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184348.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
A. S. Byatt's reflection in her co-authored book Imagining Characters was found to be provoking even if she had not been a novelist. ‘Reflecting’ on the book may either mean thinking about a novel as ...
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A. S. Byatt's reflection in her co-authored book Imagining Characters was found to be provoking even if she had not been a novelist. ‘Reflecting’ on the book may either mean thinking about a novel as if it were an image of the mind, and thinking that occurs in a novel in which the novel fosters its own mind and space. Time also has a contribution as Byatt points out a parallel between her younger reading self with Fanny Price and Austen. This reflection accounts for the double temporality of the novel and its reading, particularly in the division of consciousness not only between the reader and the book, but between the living and observing life and between the present and past. This chapter attempts to examine a mode of thought that constructs internal landscape.Less
A. S. Byatt's reflection in her co-authored book Imagining Characters was found to be provoking even if she had not been a novelist. ‘Reflecting’ on the book may either mean thinking about a novel as if it were an image of the mind, and thinking that occurs in a novel in which the novel fosters its own mind and space. Time also has a contribution as Byatt points out a parallel between her younger reading self with Fanny Price and Austen. This reflection accounts for the double temporality of the novel and its reading, particularly in the division of consciousness not only between the reader and the book, but between the living and observing life and between the present and past. This chapter attempts to examine a mode of thought that constructs internal landscape.
Colleen M. Conway
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190626877
- eISBN:
- 9780190626907
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190626877.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
The chapter analyzes A. S. Byatt’s short story “Jael,” from her collection Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice. The story evokes the Jael-Sisera tradition to develop several themes including the ...
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The chapter analyzes A. S. Byatt’s short story “Jael,” from her collection Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice. The story evokes the Jael-Sisera tradition to develop several themes including the constricted roles of women (or in this case, young schoolgirls), the relation between artistic creation and ethical standards, and the role of cultural memory in moral formation. Her protagonist puzzles over why she remembers the story of Jael, even while she narrates a muddled childhood memory of treachery. The story illustrates the ongoing capacity for the biblical tradition to intersect with individual lives. In so doing, it points to what is at stake in the loss of these traditions in the Western cultural memory.Less
The chapter analyzes A. S. Byatt’s short story “Jael,” from her collection Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice. The story evokes the Jael-Sisera tradition to develop several themes including the constricted roles of women (or in this case, young schoolgirls), the relation between artistic creation and ethical standards, and the role of cultural memory in moral formation. Her protagonist puzzles over why she remembers the story of Jael, even while she narrates a muddled childhood memory of treachery. The story illustrates the ongoing capacity for the biblical tradition to intersect with individual lives. In so doing, it points to what is at stake in the loss of these traditions in the Western cultural memory.
Judith Fletcher
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- June 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198767091
- eISBN:
- 9780191821288
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198767091.003.0003
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Chapter 3 explores how two feminist, postmodern novelists, A.S. Byatt and Elena Ferrante, revise a convention in which only male heroes return from Hades as storytellers. Byatt’s Angels and Insects ...
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Chapter 3 explores how two feminist, postmodern novelists, A.S. Byatt and Elena Ferrante, revise a convention in which only male heroes return from Hades as storytellers. Byatt’s Angels and Insects rewrites the Odyssean Nekyia in a Victorian context, as a children’s fable in one novella and a séance in the other, both of which highlight the role of the female storyteller. Set between the analyses of Byatt’s and Ferrante’s novels is a discussion of Gaiman’s children’s novella, Coraline, as a filmic adaptation by Henry Selick, to develop the question of why girls but not women can take trips to the underworld, and to explore the role of the female creator, the Other Mother. The chapter concludes with the work of Elena Ferrante to consider how she incorporates the chthonic female demon and the Persephone myth in the context of female authorship.Less
Chapter 3 explores how two feminist, postmodern novelists, A.S. Byatt and Elena Ferrante, revise a convention in which only male heroes return from Hades as storytellers. Byatt’s Angels and Insects rewrites the Odyssean Nekyia in a Victorian context, as a children’s fable in one novella and a séance in the other, both of which highlight the role of the female storyteller. Set between the analyses of Byatt’s and Ferrante’s novels is a discussion of Gaiman’s children’s novella, Coraline, as a filmic adaptation by Henry Selick, to develop the question of why girls but not women can take trips to the underworld, and to explore the role of the female creator, the Other Mother. The chapter concludes with the work of Elena Ferrante to consider how she incorporates the chthonic female demon and the Persephone myth in the context of female authorship.
David Kennedy and Christine Kennedy
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781846319778
- eISBN:
- 9781781381106
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846319778.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter examines critical approaches to women’s experimental poetry in Britain. More specifically, it considers how critics discuss women’s poetry in Britain in relation to feminism. The chapter ...
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This chapter examines critical approaches to women’s experimental poetry in Britain. More specifically, it considers how critics discuss women’s poetry in Britain in relation to feminism. The chapter begins by focusing on Caryl Churchill’s 1982 play, Top Girls, which highlights the difficulty of writing a history of women that produces the modern woman, as well as the susceptibility of that history to occlusions, elisions, and ideologically driven distortions. It then turns to Arthur Marwick’s claim that ‘the much publicised activities of tiny minorities have distracted attention from a very genuine liberation of the mass of the people’. It also analyses two accounts of the 1960s that show women struggling with the idea that looking after the body and its unruliness, socialising and managing the body, is their biologically programmed and socially demanded task: A. S. Byatt’s 2002 novel A Whistling Woman and Emma Tennant’s 200 autobiographical memoir Girlitude. Finally, it discusses debates regarding whether women’s experimental or feminist poetry is a valid and valuable form of political representation in Britain.Less
This chapter examines critical approaches to women’s experimental poetry in Britain. More specifically, it considers how critics discuss women’s poetry in Britain in relation to feminism. The chapter begins by focusing on Caryl Churchill’s 1982 play, Top Girls, which highlights the difficulty of writing a history of women that produces the modern woman, as well as the susceptibility of that history to occlusions, elisions, and ideologically driven distortions. It then turns to Arthur Marwick’s claim that ‘the much publicised activities of tiny minorities have distracted attention from a very genuine liberation of the mass of the people’. It also analyses two accounts of the 1960s that show women struggling with the idea that looking after the body and its unruliness, socialising and managing the body, is their biologically programmed and socially demanded task: A. S. Byatt’s 2002 novel A Whistling Woman and Emma Tennant’s 200 autobiographical memoir Girlitude. Finally, it discusses debates regarding whether women’s experimental or feminist poetry is a valid and valuable form of political representation in Britain.
Colleen M. Conway
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190626877
- eISBN:
- 9780190626907
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190626877.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
The chapter highlights the main trajectories of the book by tracing the movement of Jael and Sisera from ancient Israel to contemporary queer theory. It also explores the use relationship of story to ...
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The chapter highlights the main trajectories of the book by tracing the movement of Jael and Sisera from ancient Israel to contemporary queer theory. It also explores the use relationship of story to culture, making a case for the importance of a cultural resource such as the Bible and biblical traditions. The chapter concludes with an exploration of A. S. Byatt’s claim about cultural traditions, such as the Judges 4-5 story, vanishing from our world. It suggests that writing cultural histories about biblical stories, be more than an intellectual exercise. It may be a way to preserve and transmit a powerful resource for a common, cross-generational cultural conversation.Less
The chapter highlights the main trajectories of the book by tracing the movement of Jael and Sisera from ancient Israel to contemporary queer theory. It also explores the use relationship of story to culture, making a case for the importance of a cultural resource such as the Bible and biblical traditions. The chapter concludes with an exploration of A. S. Byatt’s claim about cultural traditions, such as the Judges 4-5 story, vanishing from our world. It suggests that writing cultural histories about biblical stories, be more than an intellectual exercise. It may be a way to preserve and transmit a powerful resource for a common, cross-generational cultural conversation.
