Ambiguous Discourse

296 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 5 halftones, notes, bibl., index

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8078-4599-8
Published: October 1996
E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-0-8078-6693-1
Published: November 2000
E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-6628-8
Published: November 2000

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Carefully melding theory with close readings of texts, the contributors to Ambiguous Discourse explore the role of gender in the struggle for narrative control of specific works by British writers Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Anita Brookner, Angela Carter, Jeanette Winterson, and Mina Loy. This collection of twelve essays is the first book devoted to feminist narratology--the combination of feminist theory with the study of the structures that underpin all narratives. Until recently, narratology has resisted the advances of feminism in part, as some contributors argue, because theory has replicated past assumptions of male authority and point of view in narrative. Feminist narratology, however, contextualizes the cultural constructions of gender within its study of narrative strategies. Nine of these essays are original, and three have been revised for publication in this volume. The contributors are Melba Cuddy-Keane, Denise Delorey, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Susan Stanford Friedman, Janet Giltrow, Linda Hutcheon, Susan S. Lanser, Alison Lee, Patricia Matson, Kathy Mezei, Christine Roulston, and Robyn Warhol.

About the Author

Kathy Mezei is chair and professor of English at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. She is a founding editor of Tessera, a feminist literary journal, and author of the Bibliography of Criticism on English and French Literary Translations in Canada.
For more information about Kathy Mezei, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

"An important and original collection, this book clarifies the range of reading strategies that feminist narratology encompasses, and it demonstrates, often with brilliance, the richness and variety of the literary studies that these approaches can produce."--Margaret Homans, Yale University