British Women Writers of World War II: Battlegrounds of their Own

by P. Lassner

Overview

In British Women Writers of World War II , Phyllis Lassner offers a challenging analysis of politicized literature in which such British women writers as Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, Stevie Smith and Storm Jameson debated the ‘justness' of World War II. Lassner questions prevailing approaches to women's war writing by exploring the complex range of pacifist and activist literary forms of women who redefined such pieties as patriotism and duty and heroism and victimization.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780333721957
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	03/01/1998
Edition description:	1998
Pages:	293
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

PHYLLIS LASSNER teaches Women's Studies, Jewish Studies, and Writing at Northwestern University, Illinois, USA. She is the author of two books on Elizabeth Bowen, essays on British women writers of the interwar and World War II periods, and the introduction to a rediscovered feminist classic, the 1910 novel by Karin Michaelis, The Dangerous Age.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction 'Differences that Divide and Bind' From Fascism in Britain to World War: Dystopic Warnings 'The Future is our Business': Dystopic Visions of Hitler's Victory No Place Like Home: The British Home Front 'Perpetual Civil War': Domestic Romances of Britain's Fate Keeping Faith with the Conquered: Fictions of the European Home Front Defending Europe's Others Notes Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

'Lassner is a masterful reader of these fictions; her readings are supported by intertextual analysis, and biographical details are used to illuminate, but not stand in for, interpretation.' - Meg Albrinck, University of Wisconsin, Madison

From the Publisher

An exploration of the WWII-era writings of writers such as Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, Stevie Smith, Olivia Manning, and Storm Jameson. Lassner (women's studies and Jewish studies, Northwestern U.) offers a challenging analysis of British women's literature in the 1930s and 1940s. She argues that women writers redefined the traditional pieties of patriotism and duty, as well as the categories of "hero" and "victim,", "liberal" and "conservative." Lassner's source materials included the writers' fiction, essays, and memoirs. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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