From the margins of empire : Christina Stead, Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer

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Title:

Author:

Yelin, Louise.

ISBN:

9780801435034

9780801485053

Personal Author:

Yelin, Louise.

Publication Information:

Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1998.

Physical Description:

ix, 197 p. ; 24 cm.

Series:

Reading women writing

Series Title:

Reading women writing

Contents:

Introduction: From the Margins of Empire -- Pt. I. Christina Stead: Buffoon Odyssey? 1. Unsettling Australia: The Man Who Loved Children as National Family Romance. 2. "Buffoon Odyssey"? For Love Alone and the Writing of Exile -- Pt. II. Doris Lessing: In Pursuit of the English. 3. The Englishing of Doris Lessing. 4. "Integrated with British Life at Its Roots": The Construction of British Identity in The Golden Notebook. 5. Reading Doris Lessing with Margaret Thatcher: The Good Terrorist, The Fifth Child, and England in the 1980s -- Pt. III. Nadine Gordimer: Literature and Politics in South Africa. 6. European Genealogies and South African Identity in Burger's Daughter. 7. Decolonizing the Novel: A Sport of Nature as Postcolonial Picaresque. 8. Beyond Identity: The Poetics of Nonracialism and the Politics of Cultural Translation in My Son's Story -- Conclusion: Writing beyond the Margins.

Personal Subject:

Lessing, Doris May, 1919--Political and social views.

Stead, Christina, 1902-1983-Political and social views.

Gordimer, Nadine-Political and social views.

Subject Term:

Commonwealth literature (English) -- Women authors -- History and criticism.

Women and literature -- English-speaking countries -- History -- 20th century.

National characteristics, British, in literature.

Decolonization in literature.

Imperialism in literature.

Geographic Term:

Great Britain -- In literature.

South Africa -- In literature.

Australia -- In literature.

Copies:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168015728690	820.99287 F43Y 1998	1	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Situated at the intersection of the colonial and the postcolonial, the modern and the postmodern, the novelists Christina Stead, Doris Lessing, and Nadine Gordimer all bear witness to this century's global transformations. From the Margins of Empire looks at how the question of national identity is constructed in their writings. These authors--white women who were born or grew up in British colonies or former colonies--reflect the subject of national identity in vastly different ways in both their lives and their work. Stead, who resided outside of her native Australia, has an unsettled identity. Lessing, who grew up in southern Rhodesia and migrated to England, is or has become English. Gordimer, who was born in South Africa and remains there, considers herself South African.

Louise Yelin shows how the three writers' different national identities are inscribed in their fiction. The invented, hybrid character of nationality is, she maintains, a constant throughout. Locating the writings of Stead, Lessing, and Gordimer in the national cultures that produced and read them, she considers the questions they raise about the roles that whites, especially white women, can play in the new political and cultural order.