Art and Life in the Novels of Anita Brookner: Reading for Life, Subversive Re-writing to LiveThis book treats all of Brookner's twenty-two short novels as one monolithic fiction. The autobiographical element in this controversial author's fiction is taken as a starting point to explore the complex interplay of art and life. Autobiography, as a form of emplotment of life, is the creative matrix governing the whole oeuvre, which is realistically rooted in time and space. The study draws on narrative theory, contemporary theories of fiction and recent feminist and ethical criticism. It shows how Brookner's work combines and opposes both realistic and modernist modes of writing and their philosophical underpinnings. The novels, too often misread as anti-feminist and resolutely pre-modern, appear to be more essentially postmodern than is usually acknowledged, through a heightened awareness of the role played by narrative in constructing our sense of reality and of self. The pervasive intertextuality, habitually ignored or taken to be simply a form of intellectual snobbery, is the key to understanding how the novels tackle questions of moral life as encoded in narrative discourse and fine art. In addressing the questions of how life should have been lived, Brookner's self-reflexive and ironical fiction subversively rewrites the traditional moral codes embodied in romance and which have determined the behaviour of women. Finally, this study examines the function of writing as a performative act and the role played by repetition. |
Contents
Chapter I | 27 |
A Rapidly Changing World | 46 |
Childhood and Family Past | 69 |
Copyright | |
12 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Art and Life in the Novels of Anita Brookner: Reading for Life, Subversive ... Eileen Williams-Wanquet No preview available - 2004 |
Common terms and phrases
analepsis Anita Brookner Anna autobiographical Balzac Bay of Angels behaviour binary Blanche Brookner's fiction Brookner's heroine Brookner's novels calls chapter characters discourse dream echoes Edith ethical Eugénie Eugénie Grandet explains external narrator Family and Friends feeling Frances Frederic Jameson free indirect speech Frye Genette Gérard Genette happy Harriet Hermione Lee heroine heroine's historical Hotel du Lac Ibid interview with Anita interview with Brookner Jane John Haffenden Judith Butler Julius Kitty last novel Lewis Percy Linda Hutcheon linked literary literature London looks marriage married Miriam moral mother nineteenth-century Novelists Olga Kenyon opposite parents Paris passion past postmodern present protagonists re-writing realistic reality reason references Review Rue Laugier Ruth Ruth's sadness selfish selflessness sexual Shusha Guppy social story structure temporally first narrative tense traditional twentieth century virtuous whole œuvre woman Women Writers Talk writing Zoë