Research Catalog

Mothers of invention : feminist authors and experimental fiction in France and Quebec / Miléna Santoro.

Title: Mothers of invention : feminist authors and experimental fiction in France and Quebec / Miléna Santoro.
Author: Santoro, Miléna, 1965-
Publication: Montréal ; Ithaca : McGill-Queen's University Press, c2002.

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Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Request in advance	PQ673 .S26 2002	Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 348 p. : ill.; 24 cm.

Summary

"Mothers of Invention draws together innovative works of fiction written by French and Quebec feminists in the mid-1970s. Through an analysis of the strategies adopted by Helene Cixous, Madeleine Gagnon, Nicole Brossard, and Jeanne Hyvrard as they rework maternal and (pro)creative metaphors and play with language and conventions of genre, Milena Santoro identifies a transatlantic community of women writers who share a subversive aesthetic that participates in, even as it transforms, the tradition of the avant-garde in twentieth-century literature." "Santoro elucidates notoriously difficult works by the four "mothers of invention" studied - Cixous and Hyvrard from France, and Gagnon and Brossard from Quebec - showing how the rethinking of images associated with feminity and motherhood, a disruptive approach to language, and a subversive relation to novelistic conventions characterize these writers' search for a writing that will best express women's desires and dreams." "Mothers of Invention situates such ideologically motivated textual practices within the avant-garde tradition, even as it suggests how women's experimental writings collectively transform our understanding of that tradition. Santoro makes clear the shared ethical and aesthetic commitments that nourished a transatlantic community whose contribution to mainstream literature and cultural productions, including postmodernism, is still being felt today."--BOOK JACKET.

Subject

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History

Note

Based on the author's thesis (Ph. D.--Princeton University, 1994) presented under the title: The feminist avant-garde text in France and Quebec.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (p. [319]-335) and index.

Processing Action (note)

committed to retain

Contents

History, ideology, theory : tracing the contexts of feminist writing in the 1970s in France and Quebec. The revival of feminism in France and Quebec ; The question of a new writing by/for women ; Hélène Cixous, Madeleine Gagnon, Nicole Brassard, and Jeanne Hyvrard : four "mothers of invention" ; Feminist writers and avant-garde practice -- (W)Rites of passage : Hélène Cixous's La. Points of departure ; Bringing language to (De)Light -- Excavating the body, unwinding the (inter)text : Madeleine Gagnon's Lueur. Maternal archaeographies : writing the body's will and legacy ; Her daring paradigms : hybridized genres, subversive syntax, and innovative intertextualities -- Drawing the line and transgressing limits : Nicole Brossard's L'Amèr. The lesbian subject as writer : again(st) the mother ; The problematics of genre and its links with gender -- Madwomen and the mother tongue : Jeanne Hyvrard's early novels. Of madness and the (M)other ; The refusal of language and the language of refusal.

ISBN

0773523731

LCCN

^^2004445146

OCLC

48579856
SCSB-10842836

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library