Rebecca West's Subversive Use of Hybrid Genres: 1911-41

Hardback

Main Details

Title Rebecca West's Subversive Use of Hybrid Genres: 1911-41
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Dr Laura Cowan
Physical Properties
Format:Hardback
Pages:208
Dimensions(mm): Height 234,Width 156
Category/GenreLiterary studies - from c 1900 -
Literary studies - fiction, novelists and prose writers
ISBN/Barcode 9781441144171
ClassificationsDewey:823.912
Audience
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Undergraduate

Publishing Details

Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic USA
Publication Date 21 May 2015
Publication Country United States

Description

Bringing new insights from genre theory to bear on the work of the journalist and novelist Rebecca West, this study explores how West's use of and combinations of multiple genres (often in single works) was informed and furthered by her subversive feminist goals. Rebecca West's Subversive Use of Hybrid Genres analyzes West's sense of genres as dynamic and strategic processes with transgressive political ends rather than as fixed and reified taxonomies, a radical new approach at the time that is now mirrored in much contemporary theory. Surveying her oeuvre from this point of view, the book goes on to examine systematically West's writing from 1911-1941, including her early journalism and criticism, such novels as The Return of the Soldier and her controversial multi-genre epic Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.

Author Biography

Laura Cowan is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Maine, USA. She is editor of the Centennial Essay Collection, T. S. Eliot Man and Poet (1988) and a previous Managing Editor and Co-Editor of the National Poetry Foundation journal Paideuma: Studies in American and British Modernist Poetry.

Reviews

This is a masterful study. It is impeccably researched, compellingly written, and persuasively argued [...] Cowan has written a work of commanding scholarship. * Bernard Schweizer, Professor of English, Long Island University, USA. *