Download or read book Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women s Fiction written by Susan Sellers and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Woman as gorgon, woman as temptress: the classical and biblical mythology which has dominated Western thinking defines women in a variety of patriarchally encoded roles. This study addresses the surprising persistence of mythical influence in contemporary fiction. Opening with the question 'what is myth?', the first section provides a wide-ranging review of mythography. It traces how myths have been perceived and interpreted by such commentators as Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Bruno Bettelheim, Roland Barthes, Jack Zipes and Marina Warner. This leads to an examination of the role that mythic narrative plays in social and self formation, drawing on the literary, feminist and psychoanalytic theories of Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Helene Cixous and Judith Butler to delineate the ways in which women's mythos can transcend the limitations of logos and give rise to potent new models for individual and cultural regeneration. In this light, Susan Sellers offers challenging new readings of a wide range of contemporary women's fiction, including works by A. S. Byatt, Angela Carter, Anne Rice, Michele Roberts, Emma Tennant and Fay Weldon. Topics explored include fairy tale as erotic fiction, new religious writing, vampires and gender-bending, mythic mothers, genre fiction, the still-persuasive paradigm of feminine beauty, and the radical potential of comedy.

Download or read book Myths and Fairy Tales in Contemporary Women s Fiction written by Sharon Rose Wilson and published by Palgrave MacMillan. This book was released on 2008-08-15 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Myths and Fairy Tales in Contemporary Women's Fiction explores contemporary feminist, postmodernist, and postcolonial women writers’ use and revisions of fairy tales and myths. With close readings of works ranging from Margaret Atwood to Doris Lessing to Toni Morrison, Wilson examines meanings of myths and fairy tales as well as their varying techniques, images, intertexts, and genres. Although the writers represent several different nationalities and racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, they employ a type of postcolonial literature that urges readers and societies beyond colonization. Wilson argues that the use of myths and fairy tales generally convey characters’ transformation from alienation and symbolic amputation to greater consciousness, community, and wholeness, and it is in and through story that characters construct a hybrid way of establishing themselves in the larger world.

Download or read book Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Fiction written by Alexandra Cheira and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2023-03-28 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides more sustained critical attention on the use of myth and fairy tales in contemporary fiction, both stand-alone tales and those which are embedded in the wider frame of a novel or novella. In this light, the book examines contemporary retellings of myths and fairy tales in a productive dialogue with tradition as an extended appreciation of this productive creative and theoretical dialogue. The individual chapters evince a robust variety of conceptions and approaches, all thoroughly observant of the nature and workings of the relationship between story and genre, and theoretically informed by innovative critical approaches. Hence, the volume demonstrates the undeniable importance of myth and fairy tales in contemporary fiction, suggesting questions for future consideration, and hopefully pointing towards new texts and new critical inquiries.

Download or read book Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Fiction written by Alexandra Cheira and published by . This book was released on 2023-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides more sustained critical attention on the use of myth and fairy tales in contemporary fiction, both stand-alone tales and those which are embedded in the wider frame of a novel or novella. In this light, the book examines contemporary retellings of myths and fairy tales in a productive dialogue with tradition as an extended appreciation of this productive creative and theoretical dialogue. The individual chapters evince a robust variety of conceptions and approaches, all thoroughly observant of the nature and workings of the relationship between story and genre, and theoretically informed by innovative critical approaches. Hence, the volume demonstrates the undeniable importance of myth and fairy tales in contemporary fiction, suggesting questions for future consideration, and hopefully pointing towards new texts and new critical inquiries.

Download or read book Kissing the Witch written by Emma Donoghue and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 1999-02-27 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirteen tales are unspun from the deeply familiar, and woven anew into a collection of fairy tales that wind back through time. Acclaimed Irish author Emma Donoghue reveals heroines young and old in unexpected alliances--sometimes treacherous, sometimes erotic, but always courageous. Told with luminous voices that shimmer with sensuality and truth, these age-old characters shed their antiquated cloaks to travel a seductive new landscape, radiantly transformed.Cinderella forsakes the handsome prince and runs off with the fairy godmother; Beauty discovers the Beast behind the mask is not so very different from the face she sees in the mirror; Snow White is awakened from slumber by the bittersweet fruit of an unnamed desire. Acclaimed writer Emma Donoghue spins new tales out of old in a magical web of thirteen interconnected stories about power and transformation and choosing one's own path in the world. In these fairy tales, women young and old tell their own stories of love and hate, honor and revenge, passion and deception. Using the intricate patterns and oral rhythms of traditional fairy tales, Emma Donoghue wraps age-old characters in a dazzling new skin. 2000 List of Popular Paperbacks for YA

Download or read book Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale written by Stephen Benson and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considers the profound influence of fairy tales on contemporary fiction, including the work of Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, Angela Carter, Robert Coover, Salman Rushdie, and Jeanette Winterson. Recent decades have witnessed a renaissance of interest in the fairy tale, not least among writers of fiction. In Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale, editor Stephen Benson argues that fairy tales are one of the key influences on fiction of the past thirty years and also continue to shape literary trends in the present. Contributors detail the use of fairy tales both as inspiration and blueprint and explore the results of juxtaposing fairy tales and contemporary fiction. At the heart of this collection, seven leading scholars focus on authors whose work is heavily informed and transformed by fairy tales: Robert Coover, A. S. Byatt, Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, and Salman Rushdie. In addition to investigating the work of this so-called fairy-tale generation, Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale provides a survey of the body of theoretical writing surrounding these authors, both from within literary studies and from fairy-tale studies itself. Contributors present an overview of critical positions, considered here in relation to the work of Jeanette Winterson and of Nalo Hopkinson, suggesting further avenues for research. Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale offers the first detailed and comprehensive account of the key authors working in this emerging genre. Students and teachers of fiction, folklore, and fairy-tale studies will appreciate this insightful volume.

Download or read book Love Power and Gender in Seventeenth Century French Fairy Tales written by Bronwyn Reddan and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2020-12 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Love is a key ingredient in the stereotypical fairy-tale ending in which everyone lives happily ever after. This romantic formula continues to influence contemporary ideas about love and marriage, but it ignores the history of love as an emotion that shapes and is shaped by hierarchies of power including gender, class, education, and social status. This interdisciplinary study questions the idealization of love as the ultimate happy ending by showing how the conteuses, the women writers who dominated the first French fairy-tale vogue in the 1690s, used the fairy-tale genre to critique the power dynamics of courtship and marriage. Their tales do not sit comfortably in the fairy-tale canon as they explore the good, the bad, and the ugly effects of love and marriage on the lives of their heroines. Bronwyn Reddan argues that the conteuses' scripts for love emphasize the importance of gender in determining the "right" way to love in seventeenth-century France. Their version of fairy-tale love is historical and contingent rather than universal and timeless. This conversation about love compels revision of the happily-ever-after narrative and offers incisive commentary on the gendered scripts for the performance of love in courtship and marriage in seventeenth-century France.

Download or read book Narrative Social Myth and Reality in Contemporary Scottish and Irish Women s Writing written by Tudor Balinisteanu and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-10-02 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an original interdisciplinary analysis of the relations between myth, identity and social reality, involving elements of narratology theory, linguistics, philosophy, anthropology and social theory, harnessed to support an argument firmly located in the area of literary criticism. This analysis yields a fairly extensive reinterpretation of the concept of myth, which is applied to the examination of the relationship between narrative and social reality as represented in texts by contemporary Scottish and Irish women writers. The main theoretical sources are Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of heteroglossia, Jacques Derrida’s theories of citationality and Judith Butler’s theories of subjectivity. The analysis framework developed in the book uses these theories to create a new way of understanding how literary texts change readers’ worldviews by enticing them to accept alternative possibilities of cultural expression of identity and social order. The texts analysed in this book reconfigure naturalised stories that have become normative and constraining in conveying identities and visions of legitimate social orders. The book’s focus on feminine identities places it alongside feminist analyses of reconstructions of fairy tales, myths or canonical stories that establish what counts as legitimate feminine identity. Studied here for the first time together, the writers whose texts form the interest of this book continue the revisionist work begun by other women writers who engage with the male generated literary, philosophical and humanist tradition. They share a view of narratives as tools for continually negotiating our identities, social worlds and socialisation scenarios. While the high-level theoretical discourse of the first part of the book requires specialised knowledge, the second part of the book, offering close readings of the texts, is both lively and accessible and should engage the interest of the general reader and academic alike. This book is written for all those who are interested in the power words have to hold sway over our inner and outer (social) worlds.

Download or read book The Medusa Gaze in Contemporary Women s Fiction written by Gillian M. E. Alban and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2017-08-21 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Medusa Gaze offers striking insights into the desires and frustrations of women through the narratives of the impressive contemporary novelists Angela Carter, Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, Iris Murdoch, Jeanette Winterson, Jean Rhys and Michèle Roberts. It illuminates women’s power and vulnerability as they construct their own egos in opposition to their hostile alter egos or others facing them in their mirrors, and fixes a panoptic gaze on the women stalking its pages, as they learn how to deflect the menacing gaze of others by returning their look defiantly back at them. Some stare back and win assurance; others are stared down, reduced to psychic trauma, madness and even suicide. The book shows how Freud’s, Sartre’s and Lacan’s androcentric views define the Medusa m/other as monstrous, and how the efforts of mothers to nurture may be slighted as inadequate or devouring. It presents Medusa and other goddess figures as inspirational, repelling harm through the ‘evil eye’ of their powerful gaze. Conversely, it also shows women who are condemned as monstrous Gorgons, trapped in enmity, rivalry and rage. Representing English, American and African American, Canadian and Caribbean writing, the works explored here include realistic, social narrative and magical realist writings, in addition to tales of the past and dystopian narratives.

Download or read book Dramatherapy with Myth and Fairytale written by Pat Watts and published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. This book was released on 2013-05-28 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Myths and fairytales are our rich heritage; a veritable feast of ancient wisdom passed down through the ages in the memorable form of stories. While almost any story will have deep meaning to some individuals, some of the time, this book presents a collection of stories that these maestros of dramatherapy have found to have a powerful effect almost without fail. These are the 'golden' stories of Sesame. The authors introduce the Sesame approach and describe the advantages of using myth and fairy tale as a central theme in a therapy session. The Sesame approach has been found to produce striking results with myriad client groups, including individuals with learning difficulties, offenders in psychiatric settings and children with emotional and behavioural difficulties and adults in mental health care. Dramatherapy with Myth and Fairytale provides a treasure trove of timeless stories that can be adapted and applied to the needs of different client groups and the style of each therapist. It also includes introductory exercises, warm-ups and scene setting suggestions. The book will be an invaluable source of inspiration for dramatherapists and dramatherapy students, creative arts therapists, storytellers, psychotherapists, Jungian psychoanalysts, teachers and play therapists.

Download or read book Irigaray Incarnation and Contemporary Women s Fiction written by Abigail Rine and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on the provocative recent work of feminist theorist Luce Irigaray, Irigaray, Incarnation and Contemporary Women's Fiction illuminates the vital and subversive role of literature in rewriting notions of the sacred. Abigail Rine demonstrates through careful readings how a range of contemporary women writers - from Margaret Atwood to Michèle Roberts and Alice Walker – think beyond traditional religious discourse and masculine models of subjectivity towards a new model of the sacred: one that seeks to reconcile the schism between the human and the divine, between the body and the word. Along the way, the book argues that literature is the ideal space for rethinking religion, precisely because it is a realm that cultivates imagination, mystery and incarnation.

Download or read book Myth and Subversion in the Contemporary Novel written by José Manuel Losada Goya and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This bilingual work identifies and explains the subversive rewriting of ancient, medieval and modern myths in contemporary novels. The book opens with two theoretical essays on the subject of subversive tendencies and myth reinvention in the contemporary novel. From there, it moves on to the analysis of essential texts. Firstly, classical myths in works by authors such as André Gide, Thomas Pynchon, Julio Cortázar, Italo Calvino or Christa Wolf (for instance, Theseus, Oedipus or Medea) are discussed. Then, myths of biblical origin – such as the Flood or the Golem – are revisited in the work of Giorgio Bassani, Julian Barnes and Cynthia Ozick. A further section is concerned with the place of modern myths (Faust, the ghost, Ophelia…) in the fiction of Günter Grass, Paul Auster, or Clara Janés. The contributors have also delved into the relationship between myth and art – especially in the discourse of contemporary advertising, painting and cinema – and myth’s intercultural dimensions: hybridity in the Latin American novels of Augusto Roa Bastos and Carlos Fuentes, and in the Hindu-themed novels of Bharati Mukherjee. This volume emerges from the careful selection of 37 essays out of over 200 which were put forward by outstanding scholars from 25 different countries for the Madrid International Conference on Myth and Subversion (March 2011). Este volumen bilingüe identifica y explica la práctica subversiva aplicada a los mitos antiguos, medievales y modernos en la novela contemporánea. Abren el libro dos estudios teóricos sobre la tendencia subversiva y la reinvención de mitos en la actualidad. Prosigue el análisis de diversos textos de primera importancia. En primer lugar se revisan los mitos clásicos en autores como André Gide, Thomas Pynchon, Julio Cortázar, Italo Calvino o Christa Wolf (p. ej., Teseo, Edipo, Medea). En segundo lugar, la reescritura de los mitos bíblicos según Giorgio Bassani, Julian Barnes o Cynthia Ozick (p. ej., el diluvio o el Golem). En tercer lugar, mitos modernos en la ficción de Günter Grass, Paul Auster o Clara Janés (p. ej., Fausto, el fantasma, Ofelia). El volumen presta igualmente atención a las relaciones entre mito y arte (su recurrencia en la publicidad, la pintura y el cine contemporáneos) y a la vertiente intercultural de los mitos: el mestizaje en la novela latinoamericana de Augusto Roa Bastos y Carlos Fuentes, o en la de temática hindú de Bharati Mukherjee. La compilación resulta de una exquisita selección de 37 textos entre los más de 200 propuestos para el Congreso Internacional Mito y Subversión (Madrid, marzo de 2011) por investigadores de prestigio procedentes de 25 países.

Download or read book Dramatic Revisions of Myths Fairy Tales and Legends written by Verna A. Foster and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2012-10-10 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These new essays explore the ways in which contemporary dramatists have retold or otherwise made use of myths, fairy tales and legends from a variety of cultures, including Greek, West African, North American, Japanese, and various parts of Europe. The dramatists discussed range from well-established playwrights such as Tony Kushner, Caryl Churchill, and Timberlake Wertenbaker to new theatrical stars such as Sarah Ruhl and Tarell Alvin McCraney. The book contributes to the current discussion of adaptation theory by examining the different ways, and for what purposes, plays revise mythic stories and characters. The essays contribute to studies of literary uses of myth by focusing on how recent dramatists have used myths, fairy tales and legends to address contemporary concerns, especially changing representations of women and the politics of gender relations but also topics such as damage to the environment and political violence.

Download or read book Irish Women Writers and the Modern Short Story written by Elke D'hoker and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-28 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the development of the modern short story in the hands of Irish women writers from the 1890s to the present. George Egerton, Somerville and Ross, Elizabeth Bowen, Mary Lavin, Edna O’Brien, Anne Enright and Claire Keegan are only some of the many Irish women writers who have made lasting contributions to the genre of the modern short story - yet their achievements have often been marginalized in literary histories, which typically define the Irish short story in terms of its oral heritage, nationalist concerns, rural realism and outsider-hero. Through a detailed investigation of the short fiction of fifteen prominent writers, this study aims to open up this critical conceptualization of the Irish short story to the formal properties and thematic concerns women writers bring to the genre. What stands out in thematic terms is an abiding interest in human relations, whether of love, the family or the larger community. In formal terms, this book traces the overall development of the Irish short story, highlighting both the lines of influence that connect these writers and the specific use each individual author makes of the short story form.

Download or read book Once upon a Time written by Sarah A. Appleton and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-10-02 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While it is often acknowledged that Margaret Atwood's novels are rife with allusions from the oral tradition of myth, legends, fables, and fairy tales, the implications of her liberal usage bear study. The essays in this volume have been written by some of the most influential Margaret Atwood scholars internationally, each exploring Atwood’s use of primal, indeed archetypal, narratives to illuminate her fiction and poetry. These essays interact with all types of such narratives, from fairy tales and legends, to Greek, Roman, Biblical, and pagan mythologies, to contemporary processes of myth and tale creation. And, as the works in this collection demonstrate, Atwood’s use of myths and fairy tales allows for an abundance of old, yet fresh material for contemporary readers. By reconciling, yet by also revisioning, the archetypal motifs, characters, and narratives, Atwood’s writings present a familiar, yet unique, reading experience.

Download or read book The Past That Might Have Been the Future That May Come written by Lauren J. Lacey and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-12-19 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how contemporary fantastic fiction by women writers responds to the past and imagines the future. The first two chapters look at revisionist rewritings of fairy tales and historical texts; the third and fourth focus on future-oriented narratives including dystopias and space fiction. Writers considered include Margaret Atwood, Octavia E. Butler, Angela Carter, Ursula K. Le Guin, Doris Lessing, and Jeanette Winterson, among others. The author argues that an analysis of how past and future are understood in women's fantastic fictions brings to light an "ethics of becoming" in the texts--a way of interrupting, revising and remaking problematic power structures that are tied to identity markers like class, gender and race. The book reveals how fantastic fiction can be read as narratives of disruption that enable the creation of an ethics of becoming.

Download or read book New Women s Writing in Russia Central and Eastern Europe written by Rosalind Marsh and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2020-12-07 with total page 675 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the late 1980s, there has been an explosion of women’s writing in Russia, Central and Eastern Europe greater than in any other cultural period. This book, which contains contributions by scholars and writers from many different countries, aims to address the gap in literature and debate that exists in relation to this subject. We investigate why women’s writing has become so prominent in post-socialist countries, and enquire whether writers regard their gender as a burden, or, on the contrary, as empowering. We explore the relationship in contemporary women’s writing between gender, class, and nationality, as well as issues of ethnicity and post-colonialism.