The fiction of Ellen Gilchrist / Margaret Donovan Bauer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bauer, Margaret Donovan, 1963-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Gilchrist, Ellen, 1935-2024--Criticism and interpretation.

Gilchrist, Ellen.

Gilchrist, Ellen, 1935-.

Women and literature--Southern States--History--20th century.

Women and literature.

Criticism and interpretation.

Southern States.

History.

Physical Description:

xii, 211 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Gainesville : University Press of Florida, 1999.

Summary:

IN the first book to offer a serious analysis of Ellen Gilchrist's literary style, Margaret Bauer 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.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0813016991

OCLC:

40305687