New ebooks From Canadian Indies

9780889203594_cover Enlarge Cover
0 of 5
0 ratings
rated!
rated!
list price: $41.99
edition:Paperback
also available: eBook
category: Literary Criticism
published: May 2000
ISBN:9780889203594
publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press

Narrative in the Feminine

Daphne Marlatt and Nicole Brossard

by Susan Knutson

tagged: feminism & feminist theory, women authors, canadian
Description

What does it mean to tell a story from a woman’s point of view? How have Canadian anglophone and francophone writers translated feminist literary theory into practice?
Avant-garde writers Daphne Marlatt and Nicole Brossard answer these, and many more questions, in their two groundbreaking works, now made more accessible through the careful, narratological readings and theoretical background in Narrative in the Feminine.
Susan Knutson begins her study with an analysis of the contributions made by Marlatt and Brossard to international feminist theory. Part Two presents a narratological reading of How Hug a Stone, arguing that at the deepest level of narrative, Marlatt constructs a gender-inclusive human subject which defaults not to the generic masculine but to the feminine. Part Three proposes a parallel reading of Picture Theory, Brossard’s playful novel that draws us into (re-) readings of many other texts written by Brossard, Barnes, Wittig, Joyce, de Beauvoir, Homer...to name a few. Chapter 12 closes with a reflection on the expression criture au fminin — a Qubcois contribution to an international theoretical debate.
Readers who care about feminist writing and language theory, and students and teachers of Canadian literature and critical and queer studies, will find this book invaluable for its careful readings, its scholarly overview, and its extension of the feminist concept of the generic. Not least, the study is a guide to two important works of the leading experimental writers of Canada and Quebec, Daphne Marlatt and Nicole Brossard.

About the Author
Susan Knutson was born in Vancouver but moved in 1988 to the francophone Acadian community of Clare, Nova Scotia, to teach at Université Sainte-Anne. She has authored numerous articles and one book, Narrative in the Feminine: Daphne Marlatt and Nicole Brossard (WLU Press, 2000), and has edited Canadian Shakespeare (2010) and the interdisciplinary review Port Acadie.
Contributor Notes

Susan Knutson, a professor of English at Université Sainte­Anne, is currently working on a history of “Carnivalesque Old Women from Antiquity to the Present.” In her spare time she acts in Les Araignées du boui­boui.

Editorial Review

"Much of this book is necessarily difficult, given Knutson's subject, but the author makes every effort to be accessible, translating French quotations in footnotes and carefully defining all narratological terms. Recommended for large collections serving upper-division undergraduates through faculty."

— T. Ware
X
Contacting facebook
Please wait...