Contemporary Women Writers Look Back

Ridout Alice

ISBN 10: 1441147446 / ISBN 13: 9781441147448

Published by Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011

About this Item

pp. 200 52:B&W 6.14 x 9.21in or 234 x 156mm (Royal 8vo) Case Laminate on White w/Gloss Lam.

Seller Inventory # 6916501

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Contemporary Women Writers Look Back
• Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group
• Publication Date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1441147446
• ISBN 13: 9781441147448
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Used

About this title

Synopsis

Long before John Barth announced in his famous 1967 essay that late 20th-century fiction was 'The Literature of Exhaustion,' authors have been retelling and recycling stories. Barth was, however, right to identify in postmodern fiction a particular self-consciousness about its belatedness at the end of a long literary tradition. This book traces the move in contemporary women's writing from the self-conscious, ironic parodies of postmodernism to the nostalgic and historical turn of the 21st century. It analyses how contemporary women writers deal with their literary inheritances, offering an illuminating and provocative study of contemporary women writers' re-writings of previous texts and stories.

Through close readings of novels by key contemporary women writers including Toni Morrison, Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Zadie Smith, Emma Tennant and Helen Fielding, and of the ITV adaptation, Lost in Austen, Alice Ridout examines the politics of parody and nostalgia, exploring the limitations and possibilities of both in the contexts of feminism and postcolonialism.

About the Author

Alice Ridout is Assistant Professor in the English and Film Department at Algoma University, Sault St. Marie, Canada where she teaches in the fields of Contemporary, Canadian, Children's and Popular Literature. Her work has appeared in the journals Adaptation, Margaret Atwood Studies, Doris Lessing Studies, and the University of Toronto Quarterly. She is Website Editor for the Doris Lessing Society and was President from 2012-2015. She also serves on the Editorial Board for Doris Lessing Studies and was Book Reviews Co-editor for Contemporary Women's Writing from 2009-2011. Along with her two publications with Bloomsbury Publishing, she is also co-editor of Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook After Fifty (2015).