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Subversive Subjects: Reading Marguerite Yourcenar is the first collection of articles in English to deal with many of this very private author's best-known works. Its contributors make use of a variety of literary theories to probe the complex ambiguities at the heart of Yourcenar's writings. Each contributor ventures beyond traditional readings of Yourcenar's complex texts, pushing against the boundaries of interpretation that the Belgian-born writer carefully established. Many of the essays read like a mystery; hence they follow Yourcenar's call for rigorous explications du texte as they probe her complex ouevre. Judith Holland Sarnecki is Associate Professor of French at Lawrence University. Ingeborg Majer O'Sickey is Associate Professor of German and Women's Studies at the State University of New York, Binghamton.
This volume is the first in-depth study of the French novelist Marguerite Yourcenar's fiction to contend that the author's texts exhibit in unexpected ways numerous characteristics of the neobaroque. This subversive, postmodern aesthetic privileges extravagant artistic play, flux, and heterogeneity. In demonstrating the affinity of Yourcenar's texts with the neobaroque, the author of this study casts doubt on their presumed transparency and stability, qualities associated with the French neoclassical tradition of the past century, where the Yourcenarian oeuvre is most often placed. Yourcenar's election to the prestigious, tradition-bound French Academy in 1981 as its first female "immortal" ...
From the creation of a neuter pronoun in her earliest work, L’Opoponax, to the confusion of genres in her most recent fiction, Virgile, non, Monique Wittig uses literary subversion and invention to accomplish what Erika Ostrovsky appropriately defines as renversement, the annihilation of existing literary canons and the creation of highly innovative constructs. Erika Ostrovsky explores those aspects of Wittig’s work that best illustrate her literary approach. Among the countless revolutionary devices that Wittig uses to achieve renversement are the feminization of masculine gender names, the reorganization of myth patterns, and the replacement of traditional punctuation with her own syst...
May Sarton has been writing and publishing poetry for over sixty years. A House of Gathering gives her poetry long-overdue critical attention and discusses Sarton's place among modern and contemporary world authors. As working poets, the contributors offer knowledgeable discussions of Sarton's craft. The essays cover a broad range of topics, from Pastan's memoirs of Sarton as her teacher at Radcliffe in the 1950s, to Charlotte Mandel's close scrutiny of Sarton's poetic forms in her earliest collections, to Bobby Caudle Rogers's consideration of the poetic sequence as a form in contemporary American poetry, to Keith Norris's reading of Sarton as a postmodernist. William Stafford's essay on Sarton's A Private Mythology offers eloquent testimony as to the poet's "breakthrough" in mid-career. In addition, A House of Gathering includes an original interview with May Sarton; a recent poem, "Friendship and Illness"; working drafts for "Old Lovers at the Ballet"; a letter from Sarton to H.D.; and several original photographs. These essays will appeal to readers interested in poetry and literature in general, in women's studies, and in May Sarton.
"Although these three modernist writers were not primarily playwrights, as expatriates they were interested in the Euripidean theme of women in exile: each independently chose to rewrite Euripides' Hippolytus, a play in which the protagonist is a woman in exile whose speech, writing, and passion are deeply problematic. Each author approaches the Euripidean material in a different way: Tsvetaeva focuses on gender in language, Yourcenar explores the gendering of a self, and H.D. performs the undoing of gendered oppositions."--BOOK JACKET.
This volume of essays explores influences from Antiquity onwards that shaped the literary and cultural output of the French seventeenth century and the developments to which this period - the so-called 'classical' period - gave rise in later centuries. The thirteen essays in English and French cover three major areas: the continuation in French seventeenth-century literature and cultural events of themes found in previous centuries; internal changes within the body of writings by French seventeenth-century playwrights; the influence of seventeenth-century French writers on later centuries. The collection celebrates the life and scholarly achievements of the eminent dix-septiémiste Christopher J. Gossip, Emeritus Professor of French, University of New England, Australia.
There are more than 5 Thousand Galaxies in this one Picture, taken from an area no bigger than a grain of sand. Yet, each speck of light represents no less than 500 Billion Suns. Therefore if you think life is Universal, then if you let your imagination fly to the Endless Eternity, if you can dream it, then it is possible, Yet, also probable.
In The Guernica Bull, Harry C. Rutledge examines the use of classical motifs in twentieth-century literature, art, and drama. From the echoes of Plato's dialogues at the heart of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice to the retelling of the story of Harmodius and Aristogiton--a story with grim parallels to Nazi Germany--in Marguerite Yourcenar's Léna, these modern works are a testament to both the creativity of modern artists and the versatility and timelessness of classical themes. Rutledge finds the ideal meshing of classical images and modern sensibility in Pablo Picasso's Guernica. The most startling classical image in the painting is the bull, a Cubist face staring out from the canvas at the v...