Autobiographical Tightropes

Literary Criticism
Autobiographical Tightropes

Author: Leah D. Hewitt

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

ISBN: 0803272588

Category: Literary Criticism

Page: 259

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"In order to write" said Simone de Beauvoir, "the first essential condition is that reality can no longer be taken for granted." She and four other French women writers of the second half of the twentieth century—Nathalie Sarraute, Marguerite Duras, Monique Wittig, and Maryse Condé—illustrate that producing autobiography is like performing a tightrope act on the slippery line between fact and fiction. Autobiographical Tightropes emphasizes the tension in the works of these major writers as they move in and out of "experience" and "literature," violating the neat boundaries between genres and confusing the distinctions between remembering and creating. Focusing on selected works, Leah D. Hewitt for the first time anywhere explores the connections among the authors. In doing so she shows how contemporary women's autobiography in France links with feminist issues, literary tradition and trends, and postmodern theories of writing. In light of these theories Hewitt offers a new reading of de Beauvoir's memoirs and reveals how her attempt to represent the past faithfully is undone by irony, by literary and "feminine" detours. Other analysts of Nathalie Sarraute's writing have dwelt mainly on formal considerations of the New Novel, but Hewitt exposes a repressed, forbidden feminine aspect in her literary innovations. Unlike Sarraute, Duras cannot be connected with just one literary movement, political stance, style, or kind of feminism because her writing, largely autobiographical, is marked by chameleon like transformations. The chapters on Wittig and Condé show how, within the bounds of feminism, lesbians and women of color challenge the individualistic premises of autobiography. Hewitt demonstrates that, despite vast differences among these five writers, all of them reveal in their autobiographical works the self's need of a fictive other.
Autobiographical Tightropes
Language: en
Pages: 259

Autobiographical Tightropes

Authors: Leah D. Hewitt
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 1990-01-01 - Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

"In order to write" said Simone de Beauvoir, "the first essential condition is that reality can no longer be taken for granted." She and four other French women writers of the second half of the twentieth century—Nathalie Sarraute, Marguerite Duras, Monique Wittig, and Maryse Condé—illustrate that producing autobiography is like
Against Autobiography
Language: en
Pages: 264

Against Autobiography

Authors: Lia Nicole Brozgal
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2013-12-01 - Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

The work of Tunisian Jewish intellectual Albert Memmi, like that of many francophone Maghrebian writers, is often read as thinly veiled autobiography. Questioning the prevailing body of criticism, which continues this interpretation of most fiction produced by francophone North African writers, Lia Nicole Brozgal shows how such interpretations of Memmi’s
Italian Women's Autobiographical Writings in the Twentieth Century
Language: en
Pages: 261

Italian Women's Autobiographical Writings in the Twentieth Century

Authors: Ursula Fanning
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-09-07 - Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

This critical volume offers an overview and close analysis of Italian women’s autobiographical writings from the twentieth century, engaging with issues of form and content and identifying recurring paradigms. It will be of interest to students of Italian literature and culture, autobiographical studies, and gender studies.
French Twentieth Bibliography
Language: en
Pages: 552

French Twentieth Bibliography

Authors: Douglas W. Alden
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 1994-08 - Publisher: Susquehanna University Press

This series of bibliographical references is one of the most important tools for research in modern and contemporary French literature. No other bibliography represents the scholarly activities and publications of these fields as completely.
Spoils of War
Language: en
Pages: 208

Spoils of War

Authors: Renée T. White, Denean T. Sharpley-Whiting
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 1997-08-29 - Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

In Spoils of War, a diverse group of distinguished contributors suggest that acts of aggression resulting from the racism and sexism inherent in social institutions can be viewed as a sort of 'war,' experienced daily by women of color.

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