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Library | Material Type | Call Number | Child Count | Shelf Location | Status | Item Holds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Science | Book | 813.54 G382WZ YB, 1999 | 1 | Stacks | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Searching... Science | Book | 813.54 G382B | 1 | Stacks | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
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Summary
Summary
"Original and highly significant. . . . Exposes the brilliance of Gilchrist's technique while at the same time revealing exquisite connections. . . . The depth and range of Bauer's work certainly offer readers insight into Gilchrist's fiction, but also suggest new ways of approaching American literature."--Carolyn Perry, Westminster College
"Margaret Bauer's intertextual reading of Ellen Gilchrist's fiction enriches and informs us on two fronts. She deepens our encounter with the fiction itself, and she greatly extends our knowledge of Gilchrist's imaginative engagement of Hemingway, Porter, Faulkner, Chopin, and other American literary precursors."--Peggy Prenshaw, Louisiana State University
Margaret Bauer, in the first book to offer a serious analysis of Ellen Gilchrist's literary style, places this enormously popular contemporary southern writer squarely in the American literary canon.
Bauer introduces readers first to what she terms the organic story cycle of Gilchrist's work. She then examines the stories and novels alongside those of four other major American writers, arguing that Gilchrist has transformed both the American patriarchal short story tradition epitomized by Hemingway and the southern patriarchal literary tradition epitomized by Faulkner. Gilchrist, she says, thus joins the ranks of two other women writers--Katherine Anne Porter and Kate Chopin--who have subverted the patriarchy. But Gilchrist also transforms their writing, she contends, by depicting female characters who embody refreshing, usually positive strategies for coping with oppression.
This intertextual reading reveals the traditions out of which Gilchrist's work emerges while illuminating her substantial contribution to the American traditions of the short story, southern literature, and women's literature.
Margaret Donovan Bauer, assistant professor of English at East Carolina University, has published articles on southern women writers in Studies in Short Fiction, College Language Association Journal , and Southern Literary Journal . She is the editor of North Carolina Literary Review .
Reviews (1)
Choice Review
Bauer (East Carolina Univ.) studies Gilchrist's fiction in the context of two US literary traditions: the short-story cycle and southern writing. Reader-centered theories of intertextuality underlie the comparisons of Gilchrist to Hemingway and Faulkner--whose "patriarchal" heritage she transforms--and to Katherine Anne Porter and Kate Chopin, whose themes she sometimes revises to reflect "a lessening of female oppression in the more recent South." Bauer's emphasis on the "dialogue" between "tradition and an individual talent" distinguishes her book from Mary McCay's Ellen Gilchrist (not 1990, as Bauer states, but 1997). Both critics stress Gilchrist's exploration of women's concerns, but Bauer concentrates on the earlier fiction, which she considers superior to the "post-Net of Jewels books." Of special interest to Bauer is the "composite personality" that Gilchrist develops in such recurring female characters as Amanda McCamey, Rhoda and Crystal Manning, Nora Jane Whittington, and Anna Hand. Bauer predicts that Gilchrist will "emerge as a major figure in contemporary southern literature." The index is impressively detailed on characters, themes (love, family, race, gender, etc.), and individual works. Recommended for academic libraries serving upper-division undergraduates and above. J. W. Hall; University of Mississippi