Lesbian lives : identity and auto/biography in the twentieth century / Nicky Hallett.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hallett, Nicky.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lesbians--Biography--History and criticism.

Lesbians.

Lesbians--Biography.

Lesbians--Identity.

Lesbians--History--20th century.

Lesbians in literature.

Autobiography--Women authors.

Autobiography.

History.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xi, 249 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; Sterling, Va. : Pluto Press, 1999.

Summary:

How does the factual shape our sense of sexuality and self? How far have representations of lesbianism actually moved from the pathology and deviancy of the 1920s and 1930s to the lesbian chic of the 1990s? How do contemporary ideas of autobiography intersect with a sense of sexualised self? And to what degree is the notion of a specific lesbian identity complicated by the contradictions of identity politics and the heterosexism of critical language?

In this fascinating literary study, Nicky Hallett addresses these questions by examining cultural representations of lesbianism and the personal testimony of individuals, including Virginia Woolf, Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein, Vita Sackville-West and Radclyffe Hall, and other, less familiar, figures. She considers lesbian representation within the broader context of gender, sexuality, race and the construction of identity in a postmodern culture, and questions ideas of the coded, the indirect and the hidden of the 1920s and the 'out' of the queer 1990s.

Building on the numerous studies of lesbianism in fiction and popular culture, Nicky Hallett explores the construction of lesbian identities in popular and critical biographies, autobiographies and diaries, as well as newspaper stories, interviews, obituaries, photographs and reviews. Lesbian Lives extends the boundaries of enquiry with an investigation into the ways in which lesbians represent themselves and are represented by others in the so-called factual modes of non-fiction.

Contents:

1 Historicised Contexts: Lesbianism in the 1920s and 1930s 23

2 Lesbian Lives in the 1920s and 1930s 41

3 Lesbian Auto/biography in the Early Twentieth Century 75

4 Historicised Contexts: 'The Lesbian' and Late Twentieth-Century Discourse 104

5 Lesbian Lives in the Later Twentieth Century 126

6 Lesbian Auto/biography in the Later Twentieth Century 142

7 Visual Auto/biography: (Self-) Portraits and Lesbian Iconography Across the Twentieth Century 176.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 210-233) and index.

ISBN:

0745311326

0745311318

OCLC:

41231211