Women Shapeshifters: Transforming the Contemporary Novel

by Thelma J.Y. Richard

Overview

This study presents an exciting new approach to novels that combine the traditions of Romance and Realism to offer a more comprehensive view of contemporary life. Women are the prototypical Other in patriarchal societies, as can be seen in the first four novelists—Eudora Welty, Gloria Naylor, Margaret Atwood, and Doris Lessing—who are primarily known as realists but who disrupt our expectations to shift our perspective. Moreover, Shinn analyzes how Maxine Hong Kingston, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Toni Cade Bambara write out of their consciousness as hyphenated Americans about what is necessary to achieve an integrated self and an integrated society. Shinn explores how these women have expanded not only the language but the very structure of their novels and have transformed the novelistic tradition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313296765
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	09/30/1996
Series:	Contributions in Women's Studies , #15
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	1380L (what's this?)

About the Author

THELMA J. SHINN is Professor of English and Women's Studies at Arizona State University. She has published in such jourbanals as Contemporary Literature, Explorations in Ethnic Studies, Nathaniel Hawthorne Jourbanal, Literature and Psychology, and Modern Drama. She is the author of Radiant Daughters: Fictional American Women (Greenwood, 1986) and Worlds Within Women: Myth and Mythmaking in Fantastic Literature by Women (Greenwood, 1986).

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Revisioning Reality
The Wheel of Life: Eudora Welty and Gloria Naylor
The Word Made Man: Margaret Atwood
Mapping the Mind: Doris Lessing
Realizing the Romance
Signifyin(g) Science Fiction: Octavia E. Butler
Magic Realism: Isabel Allende
Re-Possessing the Romance: A. S. Byatt
Reinventing the World
Orbiting Home: Toni Cade Bambara
Unwinding the K(Not): Maxine Hong Kingston
Weaving the Web: Leslie Marmon Silko
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Examines feminist, transformative literature through study of the writing of Eudora Welty ("A Curtain of Green"), Gloria Naylor ("The Women of Brewster Place"), Margaret Atwood ("The Handmaid's Tale"), Doris Lessing ("Canopus in Argos: Archives"), Octavia E. Butler ("Survivor"), Isabel Allende ("The House of the Spirits"), Antonia Susan Byatt ("Possession: A Romance"), Toni Cade Bambara ("The Salt Eaters"), Maxine Hong Kingston ("The Woman Warrior"), and Leslie Marmon Silko ("China Men") Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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