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This book is concerned with the figure of the female performer in nineteenth-century fiction. It explores the attitudes of Henry James, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Emile Zola towards women’s appearances on political daises and theatrical stages. Literature as a cultural force can either boost women’s participation in public life or bolster the patriarchal ideology. The book verifies Henry James’s feminist ideology that lies behind the positive representation of women’s political activism and acting, as two different modes of performance, through a comparative study between him and two of his contemporary novelists. It reflects the clash of opinions among nineteenth-century American and French authors on the issue of women’s public manifestation as caught between the spectacular and the political. While some writers have deemed it an exhibitionist demeanour, others have considered it a commitment to the feminist project. The first section shows how a feminist reading in the history of European and American female performers as emerging figures in the nineteenth century can help to understand the position of the figure in the literary works of the period. Nathaniel Hawthorne is shown to be an author who holds the same feminist temperament as James through his portrayal of a talented political rhetorician in his novel The Blithedale Romance, which is compared to James’s The Bostonians in the second section. The final part conducts a study in contrasts between James’s supportive rendering of the actress in The Tragic Muse and Emile Zola’s derogatory stereotyping of the female performer as a prostitute in his novel Nana.
This book explores Henry James’s negotiations with nineteenth-century ideas about gender, sexuality, class, and literary style through the responses of three women who have never before been substantively examined in light of their relationships to his work. Writing in different times and places, Annie Fields, Emily Dickinson, and Marguerite Duras nevertheless share complex navigations of womanhood and authorship, as well as a history of feminist scholarly responses to their work. Kathryn Wichelns draws upon James’ correspondence with Fields, as well as Dickinson’s and Duras’s revisions of his fiction, to offer a new understanding of gender-transgressive elements of his project. By contextualizing his writing within a diverse set of feminist perspectives, each grounded in a specific time and place, as well as nineteenth-century views of queer male sexuality, Wichelns demonstrates the centrality of Henry James’s ambivalent identifications with women to his work.
In an exploration of the complex relations between women and the modern, this work challenges conventional male-centred theories of modernity. It examines the gendered meanings of such notions as nostalgia, consumption, feminine writing, the popular sublime, evolution, revolution and perversion.
A collection of the author's essays on the history and development of female identity from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. Throughout the book are woven themes which are constant in Castle's work: fantasy, hallucination, travesty, transgression and sexual ambiguity.
"Both timely and well worth the time."-Thomas Keenan, Newsline. aia Award Winner & Oculus Bestseller.
From ancient Egypt through the nineteenth century, Sexual Personae explores the provocative connections between art and pagan ritual; between Emily Dickinson and the Marquis de Sade; between Lord Byron and Elvis Presley. It ultimately challenges the cultural assumptions of both conservatives and traditional liberals. 47 photographs.
In this revised and updated biography, Maureen Paton encompasses the private, professional and political life of this most enigmatic, charismatic and intensely private of actors.
Volume VII of the Cambridge History of American Literature examines a broad range of American literature of the past half-century, revealing complex relations to changes in society. Christopher Bigsby discusses American dramatists from Tennessee Williams to August Wilson, showing how innovations in theatre anticipated a world of emerging countercultures and provided America with an alternative view of contemporary life. Morris Dickstein describes the condition of rebellion in fiction from 1940 to 1970, linking writers as diverse as James Baldwin and John Updike. John Burt examines writers of the American South, describing the tensions between modernization and continued entanglements with the past. Wendy Steiner examines the postmodern fictions since 1970, and shows how the questioning of artistic assumptions has broadened the canon of American literature. Finally, Cyrus Patell highlights the voices of Native American, Asian American, Chicano, gay and lesbian writers, often marginalized but here discussed within and against a broad set of national traditions.
New edition! Convenient listing of words arranged alphabetically by rhyming sounds. More than 55,000 entries. Includes one-, two-, and three-syllable rhymes. Fully cross-referenced for ease of use. Based on best-selling Merriam-Webster's Collegiate® Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.