Exploring cultural identities in Jean Rhys' fiction / Cristina-Georgiana Voicu; managing editor, Katarzyna Grzegorek; associate editor, Anna Borowska; language editor, Barry Keene.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Voicu, Cristina-Georgiana, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rhys, Jean--Criticism and interpretation.

Rhys, Jean.

Anthropology.

Social sciences.

Sociology.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (140 pages) : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Warsaw, [Poland] ; Berlin, [Germany] : De Gruyter Open, 2014.

Language Note:

English

System Details:

text file

Summary:

Using a theoretical approach and a critical summary, combining the perspectives in the postcolonial theory, psychoanalysis and narratology with the tools of hermeneutics and deconstruction, this book argues that Jean Rhys's work can be subsumed under a poetics of cultural identity and hybridity. It also demonstrates the validity of the concept of hybridization as the expression of identity formation; the cultural boundaries variability; the opposition self-otherness, authenticity-fiction, trans-textuality; and the relevance of an integrated approach to multiple cultural identities as an encountering and negotiation space between writer, reader and work. The complexity of ontological and epistemological representation involves an interdisciplinary approach that blends a literary interpretive approach to social, anthropological, cultural and historical perspectives. The book concludes that in the author's fictional universe, cultural identity is represented as a general human experience that transcends the specific conditionalities of geographical contexts, history and culture. The construction of identity by Jean Rhys is represented by the dichotomy of marginal identity and the identification with a human ideal designed either by the hegemonic discourse or metropolitan culture or by the dominant ideology. The identification with a pattern of cultural authenticity, of racial, ethnic, or national purism is presented as a purely destructive cultural projection, leading to the creation of a static universe in opposition to the diversity of human feelings and aspirations. Jean Rhys's fictional discourse lies between "the anxiety of authorship" and "the anxiety of influence" and shows the postcolonial era of uprooting and migration in which the national ownership diluted the image of a "home" ambiguous located at the boundary between a myth of origins and a myth of becoming. The relationship between the individual and socio-cultural space is thus shaped in a dual hybrid position.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Preface

1 Identity in the Postcolonial Paradigm: Key Concepts

2 Jean Rhys' Exoticism and the Colonial Imperialism

3 Constructing Cultural Identity in Jean Rhys' Fiction

4 Jean Rhys and Intertextuality

5 Narrative Discourse in Jean Rhys' Fiction

6 Final Conclusions

Bibliography

List of Figures

List of Tables

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

This eBook is made available Open Access. Unless otherwise specified individually in the content, the work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0 https://www.degruyter.com/dg/page/open-access-policy

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed May 25, 2015).

ISBN:

83-7656-066-2

3-11-036812-9

OCLC:

900717150