Metafiction and Metahistory in Contemporary Women’s Writing

Cover......Page 1
Contents......Page 6
Acknowledgements......Page 8
Notes on the Contributors......Page 9
Introduction......Page 14
Part I: Towards a Reconceptualization of History and Identity......Page 26
1 The Witch, the Puritan and the Prophet: Historical Novels and Seventeenth-Century History......Page 28
2 History as Story in Angela Carter’s American Ghosts and Old World Wonders......Page 43
3 Falling Off the Edge of the World: History and Gender in Daphne Marlatt’s Ana Historic......Page 58
4 Time, Space and (Her)Story in the Fiction of Eva Figes......Page 72
5 From Demidenko to Darville: Behind the Scenes of a Literary Carnival......Page 86
Part II: Historiographic Re-visionings......Page 100
6 Historicizing Witchcraft Throughout the Ages: Joanna Baillie and Caryl Churchill......Page 102
7 The Benefits of Watching the Circus Animals Desert: Myth, Yeats and Patriarchy in Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus......Page 115
8 Passion and Possession as Alternatives to ‘Cosmic Masculinity’ in ‘Herstorical Romances’......Page 129
9 Michèle Roberts: Histories and Herstories in In the Red Kitchen, Fair Exchange and The Looking Glass......Page 146
Part III: Generic Experimentations with Gender and Genre......Page 160
10 Rewriting The Rover......Page 162
11 The Convent Novel and the Uses of History......Page 171
12 The Revenge of the Stereotype: Rewriting the History of the Gothic Heroine in Alice Thompson’s Justine......Page 185
13 The Resisting Writer: Revisiting the Canon, Rewriting History in Sena Jeter Naslund’s Ahab’s Wife, or The Star-Gazer......Page 195
14 Breaking the Mould? Sarah Waters and the Politics of Genre......Page 208
B......Page 224
C......Page 225
D......Page 226
F......Page 227
H......Page 228
L......Page 229
M......Page 230
P......Page 231
R......Page 232
S......Page 233
W......Page 234
Z......Page 235