Synopses & Reviews
In recent years, historical fiction, particularly that by women authors, has been at the cutting edge of postmodern reconceptualizations of the past and of contemporary worlds. This collection examines the dynamic experimentation of contemporary women writers from North America, Australia, and the UK. Blurring the dichotomies of the popular and the literary, the fictional and the factual, and covering those narratives that defy categorization, the essays assembled here offer new approaches to reading contemporary women fiction writers' reconfigurations of history.
Synopsis
This collection examines the dynamic experimentation of contemporary women writers from North America, Australia, and the UK. Blurring the dichotomies of the popular and the literary, the fictional and the factual, the essays assembled here offer new approaches to reading contemporary women fiction writers' reconfigurations of history.
About the Author
ANN HEILMANN is a Professor of English at the University of Hull, UK. The author of
New Woman Fiction and
New Woman Strategies: Sarah Grand, Olive Schreiner, Mona Caird, she has edited two previous essay collections,
Feminist Forerunners and (with Margaret Beetham)
New Woman Hybridities.
MARK LLEWELLYN is a researcher in the School of English at the University of Liverpool, UK. He has co-edited (with Ann Heilmann) four special issues on the theme of women's historical fiction for Women: a cultural review, Women's Writing, Critical Survey and Feminist Review.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements * Notes on Contributors * Introduction: Metafiction and Metahistory in Contemporary Women's Writing--A.Heilmann & M.Llewellyn * PART ONE: TOWARDS A RECONCEPTUALIZATION OF HISTORY AND IDENTITY * The Witch, The Puritan and the Prophet: Historical Novels and Seventeenth-Century History--K.Hodgkin * History as Story in Angela Carter's
American Ghosts and Old World Wonders--S.Gamble * Falling off the Edge of the World: History and Gender in Daphne Marlatt's
Ana Historic--S.Booth * Time, Space and (Her)Story in the Fiction of Eva Figes--J.Tofantsuk * From Demidenko to Darville: Behind the Scenes of a Literary Carnivale--R.Morley * PART TWO: HISTORIOGRAPHIC RE-VISIONINGS * Historicizing Witchcraft throughout the Ages: Joanna Baillie and Caryl Churchill--C.A.Colón * The Benefits of Watching the Circus Animals Desert: Myth, Yeats, and Patriarchy in Angela Carter's
Nights at the Circus--M.Sinowitz *
Passion and
Possession as Alternatives to 'Cosmic Masculinity' in 'Herstorical' Romances--
G.Letissier * Michèle Roberts: Histories and Herstories in
In the Red Kitchen,
Fair Exchange and
The Looking Glass--S.Falcus * PART THREE: GENERIC EXPERIMENTATIONS WITH GENDER AND GENRE * Rewriting
The Rover--J.M.Smith * The Convent Novel and the Uses of History--D.Wallace * The Revenge of a Stereotype: Re-Writing the History of the Gothic Heroine in Alice Thompson's
Justine--M.Vara * The Resisting Writer: Revisiting the Canon, Rewriting History in Sena Jeter Naslund's
Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer--J.King * Breaking the Mould? Sarah Waters and the Politics of Genre--M.Llewellyn * Index Acknowledgements * Notes on Contributors * Introduction: Metafiction and Metahistory in Contemporary Women's Writing--A.Heilmann & M.Llewellyn * PART ONE: TOWARDS A RECONCEPTUALIZATION OF HISTORY AND IDENTITY * The Witch, The Puritan and the Prophet: Historical Novels and Seventeenth-Century History--K.Hodgkin * History as Story in Angela Carter's
American Ghosts and Old World Wonders--S.Gamble * Falling off the Edge of the World: History and Gender in Daphne Marlatt's
Ana Historic--S.Booth * Time, Space and (Her)Story in the Fiction of Eva Figes--J.Tofantsuk * From Demidenko to Darville: Behind the Scenes of a Literary Carnivale--R.Morley * PART TWO: HISTORIOGRAPHIC RE-VISIONINGS * Historicizing Witchcraft throughout the Ages: Joanna Baillie and Caryl Churchill--C.A.Colón * The Benefits of Watching the Circus Animals Desert: Myth, Yeats, and Patriarchy in Angela Carter's
Nights at the Circus--M.Sinowitz *
Passion and
Possession as Alternatives to 'Cosmic Masculinity' in 'Herstorical' Romances--
G.Letissier * Michèle Roberts: Histories and Herstories in
In the Red Kitchen,
Fair Exchange and
The Looking Glass--S.Falcus * PART THREE: GENERIC EXPERIMENTATIONS WITH GENDER AND GENRE * Rewriting
The Rover--J.M.Smith * The Convent Novel and the Uses of History--D.Wallace * The Revenge of a Stereotype: Re-Writing the History of the Gothic Heroine in Alice Thompson's
Justine--M.Vara * The Resisting Writer: Revisiting the Canon, Rewriting History in Sena Jeter Naslund's
Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer--J.King * Breaking the Mould? Sarah Waters and the Politics of Genre--M.Llewellyn * Index