Rachel Bowlby's acclaimed book on Virginia Woolf now appears with five new essays which look at Woolf in a number of new frames - as a woman essayist; as a city writer and critic of modern culture; and as a writer on love.
'A fantasy, impossible but delicious ... an exuberance of life and wit' The Times Literary Supplement First masculine, then feminine, Orlando begins life as a young sixteenth-century nobleman, then gallops through the centuries to end up as a woman writer in Virginia Woolf's own time. Written for the charismatic, bisexual writer Vita Sackville-West, this playful mock biography of a chameleon-like historical figure is both a wry commentary on gender and, in Woolf's own words, a 'writer's holiday' which delights in its ambiguity and capriciousness. Edited by Brenda Lyons with an Introduction and Notes by Sandra M. Gilbert
Shopping, Parenthood, Changing Feminist Stories
The book presents a compelling feminist argument that spans various aspects of life, including consumer culture, parenting, and literary analysis. It explores how these areas intersect with feminist ideals, challenging traditional norms and advocating for women's rights and representation. Through thoughtful insights and critical examination, the author encourages readers to reflect on the societal structures that influence their experiences and highlights the importance of feminist perspectives in everyday life.
The analysis delves into Émile Zola's Rougon-Macquart series, exploring its themes and character development. It also examines the latter part of Zola's life, focusing on his experiences during his exile in England. This dual perspective provides insight into both the literary contributions of Zola and the personal challenges he faced, enriching the understanding of his works and their historical context.
The anthology features a diverse array of articles exploring Virginia Woolf's influence on writing, literary traditions, and gender differences. It includes contributions from prominent writers like Gillian Beer and Mary Jacobus, offering insights rather than definitive answers. This collection highlights the richness of contemporary discussions surrounding Woolf's work, making it a valuable resource for those interested in feminist literary criticism and the complexities of gender in literature.
Over time, shops have occupied radically different places in cultural arguments and everyday lives. Back to the Shops offers a set of short, often surprising chapters, each one a window into a different shop type or mode of selling.
When something called theory first broke onto the seemingly stagnant scene of literary studies, it offered bright new ways and fields for critical new methods and subjects, and also new words to speak them. The syllabus and the styles would never be the same, and reading was proudly claimed as a mode of social critique. The short pieces brought together in Talking Walking engage with all sorts of arguments then, now and earlier about the uses and history of critical reading -- of literature, and also of other cultural forms. There is much on the changing styles of literary-critical writing, and on the place of particular writers -- Virginia Woolf or Jacques Derrida -- in contemporary critical culture. There are pieces on cliches, on footnotes, on the language of the university job interview, on the use of domesticate as a catch-all negative term. There are also essays on cultural questions informed by critical theory. For why has the topic of walking been sucha fruitful thinking
Since Freud reimagined Sophocles' Oedipus as a transhistorical Everyman, far- reaching changes have occurred in the social and sexual conditions of Western identity. This book shows how both classical and Freudian perspectives may now differently illuminate the forming stories of a present-day world of serial families, multiple sexualities, and reproductive technologies.