Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) was a pioneering female journalist, experimental novelist, playwright, and poet whose influence on literary modernism was profound and whose writings anticipated many of the preoccupations of poststructuralist and feminist thought. In her new book, Diane Warren argues that Barnes' writings made significant contributions to gender and aesthetic debates in their immediate early twentieth-century context, and that they continue to contribute to present-day debates on identity. In particular, Warren traces the works' close engagement with the effects of cultural boundaries on the individual, showing how the journalism, "Ryder", "Ladies Almanack", and the early chapters of "Nightwood" energetically and playfully subvert such boundaries.In this reading, "Nightwood" is contextualised as a pivotal text which poses questions about the limits of subversion, thereby positioning "The Antiphon" (1958) as an analysis of why such boundaries are sometimes necessary.
Djuna Barnes' "Consuming Fictions" shows that from the irreverent and carnivalesque iconoclasm of Barnes' early works, to the bleak assessment that conflict lies at the root of culture, seen from the close of "Nightwood", Barnes' oeuvre offers a profound analysis of the relationship between culture, the individual and textual expression.
- ISBN10 0754639207
- ISBN13 9780754639206
- Publish Date 28 April 2008
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 6 May 2014
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Imprint Ashgate Publishing Limited
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 202
- Language English