Opening acts : narrative beginnings in twentieth-century feminist fiction / Catherine Romagnolo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Romagnolo, Catherine, author.

Series:

Frontiers of narrative.

Frontiers of narrative

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American fiction--Women authors--History and criticism.

American fiction.

American fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

Feminism in literature.

Narration (Rhetoric).

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

Women and literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxxi, 155 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Lincoln, Nebraska ; London, [England] : University of Nebraska Press, 2015.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"Examination of the ways twentieth-century novels deployed formal beginnings to challenge and destabilize the masculine and racialized authorities of traditional narrative beginnings, using six novels as case studies"-- Provided by publisher.

"In the beginning there was. the beginning. And with the beginning came the power to tell a story. Few book-length studies of narrative beginnings exist, and not one takes a feminist perspective. Opening Acts reveals the important role of beginnings as moments of discursive authority with power and agency that have been appropriated by writers from historically marginalized groups. Catherine Romagnolo argues for a critical awareness of how social identity plays a role in the strategic use and critical interpretation of narrative beginnings.The twentieth-century U.S. women writers whom Romagnolo studies--Edith Wharton, H.D., Toni Morrison, Julia Alvarez, and Amy Tan--have seized the power to disrupt conventional structures of authority and undermine historical master narratives of marriage, motherhood, U.S. nationhood, race, and citizenship. Using six of their novels as points of entry, Romagnolo illuminates the ways in which beginnings are potentially subversive, thereby disrupting the reinscription of hierarchically gendered and racialized conceptions of authorship and agency"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

No place for her individual adventure: Motherhood, marriage, and new beginnings in Summer

Waves of beginnings: The ebb of heterosexual romance in Paint It Today

Moving in lofty spirals: Circularity and narrative beginnings in The Bluest Eye

Circling the history of slavery: Multilayered beginnings in Beloved

Swan feathers and Coca-Cola: Authenticity and origins in The Joy Luck Club

Bordering Yolanda García: Recessive origins in How the García Girls Lost their Accents.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780803285026

0803285027

9780803285002

0803285000

OCLC:

918941497