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

by Cowan, Laura

• ISBN13: 9781441144171
• ISBN10: 144114417X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-07-16
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

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 a previous Managing Editor and Co-Editor of the National Poetry Foundation journal Paideuma: Studies in American and British Modernist Poetry.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Interstices between West's Genres \ 1. A Struggle Towards Adventure: 1911-1928 \ 2. A Mystical Confusion of Substance: 1927-1933 \ 3. The Tragic Spirit Come Back To Life: 1930-1937 \ 4. The Idea of Magnificence: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1939-1941) \ Bibliography \ Index.