A. S. Byatt and Intellectual Women

A. S. Byatt and Intellectual Women PDF Author: Leanne Bibby
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031086716
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
This monograph is a study of the work of British author A. S. Byatt, exploring the cultural representation of the woman intellectual in her fiction. It argues that Byatt’s representations of this figure show narratives of intellectual women to be inherently mythopoeic, or capable of restructuring the myth of the intellectual as male by default. This mythopoeia is, furthermore, intrinsically feminist in function, thus potentially broadening the conventional, limited view of women in intellectual history. The book will be the first study of Byatt’s work to examine this figure in detail, and the first study of women intellectuals in historical and literary discourse to apply concepts of mythopoeia and sexual difference in ways that allow new readings of women’s status and work in public spheres.

A. S. Byatt and Intellectual Women

A. S. Byatt and Intellectual Women PDF Author: Leanne Bibby
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031086716
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Get Book Here

Book Description
This monograph is a study of the work of British author A. S. Byatt, exploring the cultural representation of the woman intellectual in her fiction. It argues that Byatt’s representations of this figure show narratives of intellectual women to be inherently mythopoeic, or capable of restructuring the myth of the intellectual as male by default. This mythopoeia is, furthermore, intrinsically feminist in function, thus potentially broadening the conventional, limited view of women in intellectual history. The book will be the first study of Byatt’s work to examine this figure in detail, and the first study of women intellectuals in historical and literary discourse to apply concepts of mythopoeia and sexual difference in ways that allow new readings of women’s status and work in public spheres.

Still Life

Still Life PDF Author: A.S. Byatt
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0684835037
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
In this sequel to 'The Virgin in the Garden, ' in the 1950s, Stephanie Potter, now married to a clergyman, is conflicted about her domestic life and her strivings for intellectual fulfillment; her brilliant sister Frederica eagerly embarks on her academic (and sexual) education at Cambridge University; and their troubled brother Marcus painfully tries to find friendship and love.

The Children's Book

The Children's Book PDF Author: A. S. Byatt
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307373835
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 626

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Book Description
From the renowned author of Possession, The Children’s Book is the absorbing story of the close of what has been called the Edwardian summer: the deceptively languid, blissful period that ended with the cataclysmic destruction of World War I. In this compelling novel, A.S. Byatt summons up a whole era, revealing that beneath its golden surface lay tensions that would explode into war, revolution and unbelievable change — for the generation that came of age before 1914 and, most of all, for their children. The novel centres around Olive Wellwood, a fairy tale writer, and her circle, which includes the brilliant, erratic craftsman Benedict Fludd and his apprentice Phillip Warren, a runaway from the poverty of the Potteries; Prosper Cain, the soldier who directs what will become the Victoria and Albert Museum; Olive’s brother-in-law Basil Wellwood, an officer of the Bank of England; and many others from every layer of society. A.S. Byatt traces their lives in intimate detail and moves between generations, following the children who must choose whether to follow the roles expected of them or stand up to their parents’ “porcelain socialism.” Olive’s daughter Dorothy wishes to become a doctor, while her other daughter, Hedda, wants to fight for votes for women. Her son Tom, sent to an upper-class school, wants nothing more than to spend time in the woods, tracking birds and foxes. Her nephew Charles becomes embroiled with German-influenced revolutionaries. Their portraits connect the political issues at the heart of nascent feminism and socialism with grave personal dilemmas, interlacing until The Children’s Book becomes a perfect depiction of an entire world. Olive is a fairy tale writer in the era of Peter Pan and Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind In the Willows, not long after Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. At a time when children in England suffered deprivation by the millions, the concept of childhood was being refined and elaborated in ways that still influence us today. For each of her children, Olive writes a special, private book, bound in a different colour and placed on a shelf; when these same children are ferried off into the unremitting destruction of the Great War, the reader is left to wonder who the real children in this novel are. The Children’s Book is an astonishing novel. It is an historical feat that brings to life an era that helped shape our own as well as a gripping, personal novel about parents and children, life’s most painful struggles and its richest pleasures. No other writer could have imagined it or created it.

A.S. Byatt and the Heliotropic Imagination

A.S. Byatt and the Heliotropic Imagination PDF Author: Jane Campbell
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 088920439X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Contemporary writer Byatt uses the term heliotropic in two ways. First, it refers to her exploration and development of her own relation to the sun and to how her women characters experience adventures of the mind and feelings that bring them into the sun's light. Second, it refers to the fact that she suffers from seasonal affective disorder, and

The Biographer's Tale

The Biographer's Tale PDF Author: Antonia Susan Byatt
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 009928393X
Category : Biographers
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Phineas G. sets out to write a biography of a great biographer. But a "whole life" is hard to find. Everywhere he looks he finds fragments and gaps: bones and husks, boxes of marbles, collections of coins and undated postcards. Trails run cold and mysteries are unresolved. Phineas feels he is hunting shadows. Like a shaman flying across the globe, his mind tracks the journeys of his subjects to the deserts of Africa and the maelstroms of the Arctic. He meets others building wholes from bits and pieces: taxonomists, ecologists, travel agents offering the trip of your dreams. In the process he also puzzles out his own future - but how will he find his way out of the labyrinth? Tantalizing, comic and rueful, The Biographer's Tale is a modern delight, a colour-filled novel of detection and desire.

Identity and Cultural Memory in the Fiction of A. S. Byatt

Identity and Cultural Memory in the Fiction of A. S. Byatt PDF Author: L. Steveker
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230248594
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
This book provides innovative readings of the key texts of A.S. Byatt's oeuvre by analysing the negotiations of individual identity, cultural memory, and literature which inform Byatt's novels. Steveker explores the concepts of identity constructed in the novels, showing them to be deeply rooted in British literary history and cultural memory.

The Fiction of A.S. Byatt

The Fiction of A.S. Byatt PDF Author: Louisa Hadley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1349921815
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
This Guide examines the key critical responses to Byatt's fiction (both her novels and short stories) tracing the wider debates about realism, postmodernism and feminism with which they engage. The Guide also explores the themes which are central to Byatt's work, such as her depiction of writer-figures and her conception of artistic vision.

A.S.Byatt: Art, Authorship, Creativity

A.S.Byatt: Art, Authorship, Creativity PDF Author: C. Franken
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230510043
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
This book considers the work of the novelist and critic A.S. Byatt in the context of contemporary debates about art, authorship, creativity and gender. A.S. Byatt emerges as an author who presents us with fascinating and ambivalent portraits of writers and who uses metaphors of creativity in original ways.

Women's Fiction and Post-9/11 Contexts

Women's Fiction and Post-9/11 Contexts PDF Author: Peter Childs
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 149850096X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
9/11 is not simple a date on the calendar but marks a distinct historical threshold, ushering in the war on terror, various states of emergency, a supposed “clash of civilizations,” and the putative legitimation of counter-democratic procedures ranging from extraordinary renditions to enhanced interrogation. Perhaps no date, since Virginia Woolf declared that “on or about December 1910 human character changed,” has marked such a singular point in the perception of time, identity and nature. Women’s writing has always been something of a counter-canon, offering modes of voice and point of view beyond that of the “man” of reason. This collection of essays explores the two problems of what it means to write as a woman and what it means to write in the twenty-first century.

A.S. Byatt and the Heliotropic Imagination

A.S. Byatt and the Heliotropic Imagination PDF Author: Jane Campbell
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 1554580765
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
A.S. Byatt’s novel Possession: A Romance attracted international acclaim in 1990, winning both the Booker Prize and the Irish Times/Aer Lingus International Fiction Prize. In her long and eminent career, Byatt has steadily published both fiction and non-fiction, the latest of which has not, until now, been given full critical consideration. Enter Jane Campbell’s new book, A.S. Byatt and the Heliotropic Imagination, a comprehensive critical reading of Byatt’s fiction from The Shadow of the Sun and The Game, published in the 1960s, to A Whistling Woman (2002). The book begins with an overview of Byatt’s writing and, drawing on her interviews and essays, sets forth the critical principles that inform the novelist’s work. Following this introduction, a chronologically structured account of the novels and short stories traces Byatt’s literary development. As well as exploring the ways in which Byatt has successfully negotiated a path between twentieth-century realism and postmodern experiment, Campbell employs a critical perspective appropriate to the author’s individualistic feminist stance, stressing the breadth of Byatt’s intellectual concerns and her insistence on placing her female characters in a living, changing context of ideas and experience, especially in their search for creative voice.