Contemporary Women Writers Look Back: From Irony to Nostalgia (Continuum Literary Studies)

Long Before John Barth Announced In His Famous 1967 Essay That Late Twentieth-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 Twenty-first 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.--publisher Description. Introduction: Contemporary Women's Re-writing -- The Politics Of Parody: Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye -- 'some Books Are Not Read In The Right Way': Parody And Reception In Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook -- Parodic Self-narratives: Margaret Atwood's Lady Oracle And The Blind Assassin -- Inheritances: Zadie Smith's On Beauty -- The Politics Of Nostalgia: Jane Austen Recycled. Alice Ridout. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [165]-182 ) And Index. This book offers an analysis of the relationship between post-war women's fiction and temporality. By bringing the concepts of parody and nostalgia to bear on a variety of novels by women published from the 1960s to the present, Ridout illuminates the complex means by which textual repetition functions as a political and literary register for women novelists, providing a new and valuable means of unifying and understanding women's writing in the period." Five chapters look at novels of Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, Jane Austen, Doris Lessing and Zadie Smith Contents Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: Contemporary Women’s Re-writing Chapter 1. The Politics of Parody: Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye Chapter 2. ‘Some books are not read in the right way’: Parody and Reception in Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook Chapter 3. Parodic Self-Narratives: Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle and The Blind Assassin Chapter 4. Inheritances: Zadie Smith’s On Beauty Chapter 5. The Politics of Nostalgia: Jane Austen Recycled Afterword: Belatedness Notes Bibliography Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z