(Sem)Erotics – Theorizing Lesbian: Writing
Elizabeth Meese
What is at stake in the production of experimental texts by lesbian writers? What motivates these writers and characterizes their work? What is the nature of their appeal to other lesbian writers and readers? What, finally, are the continuities and discontinuities in the tradition of lesbian writers, from Virginia Woolf to Nicole Brossard? Many works by lesbian writers, such as Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, Djuna Barnes and Gertrude Stein, made a considerable impact on their contemporary readership, but then faded, primarily because they lacked compatibility with 20th-century attitudes towards narratives. While much has been written on Woolf, Stein and others, the fundamental ‘lesbian question’, the one that engages their lesbian frame of vision, is rarely asked: when Virginia looked at Vita, what did she see? In this work, Elizabeth Meese examines the ways in which the ‘experiences’ of the text, and the ‘experiences’ of characters, diverge and converge with the writer’s own biography.Entering into previously forbidden territory, Meese considers such issues as authorial intention, the intersection of life and work (the signature), and the semiotic/erotic space of the woman writer’s body. This book aims to illustrate the ways in which the relationship of the reader to the text and its author is often like that of a lover.
(Cutting Edge : Lesbian Life and Literature)
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Details
| ISBN | 9780814754702 |
| Genre | Literary Criticism |
| Publication Date | 01-Jul-92 |
| Publisher | NYU Press |
| Format | Trade Paperback |
| No. of Pages | 188 |
| Language | English |
| Rating | Good |
| BookID | 5 |
