Loving Arms: British Women Writing the Second World WarUniversity Press of Kentucky, 15.7.2014 - 232 sivua Loving Arms examines the war-related writings of five British women whose works explore the connections among gender, war, and story-telling. While not the first study to relate the subjects of gender and war, it is the first within a growing body of criticism to focus specifically on British culture during and after World War II. Evoking the famous "St. Crispin's Day" speech from Henry V and then her own father's account of being moved to tears on V-J Day because he had been too young to fight, Karen Schneider posits that the war story has a far-reaching potency. She admits—perhaps for all of us—that such stories "had powerfully shaped my consciousness in ways I could not completely resist." How a story is narrated and by whom are matters of no small importance. As widely defined and accepted, war stories are men's stories. If we are to hear an "other" story of war, then we must listen to the stories women tell. Many of the war stories written by women insist that war is not the condition of men but rather the condition of humanity, beginning with relations between the sexes. For the five women whose work is examined in Loving Arms—Stevie Smith, Katharine Burdekin, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, and Doris Lessing—this latter point was particularly relevant. Their positions as women within a patriarchal, militarist culture that was externally threatened by an overtly fascist one led to an acute ambivalence, says Schneider. Though all five women perceived the war from substantially different perspectives, each in her own way exposed and critiqued the seductive power of war and war stories, with their densely interwoven tropes of masculinity and nationalism. Yet these writers' conflicting impulses of loyalty to England and resistance to the war betray their ambivalence. Loving Arms will interest students of twentieth-century British literature and culture, gender studies, and narratology. Even today, we maintain an unabated love affair with the war story. But unless we listen to what the women had to say fifty years ago, we are doomed to hear only "the same old story." |
Kirjan sisältä
Tulokset 1 - 5 kokonaismäärästä 56
... BOwen's Collaboration and Resistance 74 4 Re-Plotting the War(s): Virginia Woolf's Radical Legacy 109 5 A Different Story: Doris Lessing's Great Escape 133 Coda: As Time Goes By 174 Notes 183 Works Cited 205 Index 216 For Minnie ...
... Bowen's Court. Bowen Behind the Lines. Higonnet, et al. The Collected Essays of Virginia Woolf. Woolf Collected Impressions. Bowen The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen. Bowen Children of Violence. Lessing The Diary of Viginia Woolf ...
... Bowen, Virginia Woolf, and Doris Lessing share certain characteristics that invite their consideration as a group. Despite obvious national differences, as British civilians these women shared a history, a literary tradition, and a ...
... Bowen than in Woolf and Lessing, and the organization of the chapters that follow reflects this. To begin with Katharine Burdekin and Stevie Smith is also to emphasize the independence of their observations from those of Virginia Woolf ...
... Bowen, Woolf, and Lessing elaborated on these very questions in precisely the terms suggested by these three dialogic comments on war. Like McCallum, the embittered British officer quoted above, these writers recognized in World War II ...
Sisältö
1 | |
10 | |
37 | |
Elizabeth Bowens Collaboration and Resistance | 74 |
Virginia Woolfs Radical Legacy | 109 |
Doris Lessings Great Escape | 133 |
As Time Goes By | 174 |
Notes | 183 |
Works Cited | 204 |
Index | 216 |
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Loving Arms: British Women Writing the Second World War Karen Schneider Esikatselu ei käytettävissä - 1997 |