Imagining Gender in Biographical Fiction

by Julia Novak (Editor), Caitríona Ní Dhúill (Editor)

Overview

This volume addresses the current boom in biographical fictions across the globe, examining the ways in which gendered lives of the past become re-imagined as gendered narratives in fiction. Building on this research, this book is the first to address questions of gender in a sustained and systematic manner that is also sensitive to cultural and historical differences in both raw material and fictional reworking. It develops a critical lens through which to approach biofictions as ‘fictions of gender’, drawing on theories of biofiction and historical fiction, life-writing studies, feminist criticism, queer feminist readings, postcolonial studies, feminist art history, and trans studies. Attentive to various approaches to fictionalisation that reclaim, appropriate or re-invent their ‘raw material’, the volume assesses the critical, revisionist and deconstructive potential of biographical fictions while acknowledging the effects of cliché, gender norms and established narratives in manyof the texts under investigation.

The introduction of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com

Chapter 1 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783031090219
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	12/16/2022
Series:	Palgrave Studies in Life Writing
Edition description:	1st ed. 2022
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Caitríona Ní Dhúill is Professor in German at University College Cork, Ireland. She is the author of Metabiography: Reflecting on Biography (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) and Sex in Imagined Spaces: Gender and Utopia from More to Bloch (2010). She is co-editor of the journal Austrian Studies, and guest co-editor of a double special issue of Poetics Today (2016) on negative futures. She has published numerous articles and book chapters on gender theory, utopian theory, modernist literature and life writing.

Julia Novak holds a tenure-track professorship for Anglophone Literature and Mediality at the University of Vienna. Her work on life writing and biofiction has appeared in journals such as Biography; Contemporary Women’s Writing; a/b: Auto/Biography Studies; Life Writing; and the Journal of Postcolonial Writing. She has co-edited a special issue on “Women’s Lives on Screen” for the European Journal of Life Writing (2021), of which she is an editor, as well as Experiments in Life Writing: Intersections of Auto/Biography and Fiction (Palgrave 2017); Life Writing and Celebrity (Routledge 2020); and the inaugural issue of the Journal of Historical Fictions (2017).

Table of Contents

1. Imagining Gender in Biographical Fiction: Introduction.- Part I. Recovery, Revision, Ventriloquism: Imagining Historical Women.- 2. “Everything Is Out of Place”: Virginia Woolf, Women, and (Meta-)Historical Biofiction.- 3. Fictional Futures for a Buried Past: Representations of Lucia Joyce.- 4. Imagining Jiang Qing: The Biographer’s Truth in Anchee Min’s Becoming Madame Mao.- Part II. Re-imagining the Early Modern Subject.- 5. From Betrayed Wife to Betraying Wife: Re-writing Katherine of Aragon as Catalina in Philippa Gregory’s The Constant Princess.- 6. Jean Plaidy and Philippa Gregory Fighting for Gender Equality Through Katherine Parr’s Narrative.- 7. Australian Women Writing Tudor Lives.- Part III. Writing the Writer: History, Voyeurism, Victimisation.- 8. Biofiction, Compulsory Sexuality, and Celibate Modernism in Colm Tóibín’s The Master and David Lodge’s Author, Author.- 9. In Poe’s Shadow: Frances Sargent Osgood.- 10. Stanisława Przybyszewska as a Case of Posthumous Victimisation: On the Ethics of Biofiction.- Part IV. Creativity and Gender in the Arts and Sciences.- 11. Re-visiting the Renaissance Virtuosa in Biofiction on Sofonisba Anguissola.- 12. The “Mother of the Theory of Relativity”? Re-imagining Mileva Marić in Marie Benedict’s The Other Einstein (2016).- Part V. Queering Biofiction.- 13. Visceral Biofiction: Herculine Barbin, Intersex Embodiment, and the Biological Imaginary in Aaron Apps’s Dear Herculine.- 14. “A Way Out of the Prison of Gender”: Interview with Novelist Patricia Duncker.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This volume provides new insights into gender issues in very diverse texts from the field of biographical fiction and establishes intriguing links between gender and genre, besides uncovering the gender bias of traditional biography. The wide range of topics with different theoretical approaches not only mirrors the complexity and broadness of gender issues related to biofiction but also shows the necessity of bringing together research on this topic in one volume. Its contributors come from different countries and research communities, which is an additional asset in providing necessary interdisciplinary perspectives on biographical fiction.” (Franziska Gygax, Professor Emerita of Anglophone Linguistics and Literary Studies, University of Basel, Switzerland)

“A fascinating exploration of the intimate interaction of gendered history and biographical fiction. Imagining Gender in Biographical Fiction ... intelligently and incisively interrogates the deliberate use of fiction to recentre marginalised female historical figures.” (Farah Mendlesohn, author of Creating Memory: Historical Fiction and the English Civil Wars (2022) and Founder of the Historical Fiction Research Network, UK)

Editorial Reviews

The volume as a whole is of great value to scholars and students of biofiction as a genre. The majority of essays also work in isolation for those interested in the authors and historical subjects represented. … this volume paves the way for a more inclusive and flexible understanding of biofiction. As it stands, it represents a welcome addition to life-writing scholarship.” (Bethany Layne, European Journal of Life Writing, Vol. 12, 2023)

“Imagining Gender in Biographical Fiction (2024) makes a fine contribution to the Palgrave Studies in Life Writing series. … This book will prove useful to students, especially postgrads, and academics working in English studies, historical fiction, literary studies, life writing (in particular, biography), and women’s studies. … Imagining Gender in Biographical Fiction was a fine text … .” (Gay Lynch, Life Writing, February 19, 2024)

From the Publisher