Elizabeth Bowen by Maud Ellmann
WINER of the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Literary PrizeThis study reveales both the pleasures offered by Elizabeth Bowen's works to the general reader and the literary critic, theorist and historian.Elizabeth Bowen was one of the finest writers of fiction in English in the twentieth century and one of the strangest. Born in 1899, her historical vision extends from the Irish Troubles of the 1920s to the London Blitz and the technological revolution of the post-war years. Her fiction is always entertaining - funny, moving and full of suspense - but it is also profoundly disconcerting.Maud Ellmann teases out Bowen's strangeness through close readings informed by historical, psychoanalytic and deconstructive methods of interpretation. She contextualises Bowen's work in the Irish and modernist traditions to investigate connections between her life and writing. She thoroughly expores Bowen's conflicting and complicit relations with other Irish, British, and European writers, her negotiations bet
Ellmann writes a searching, critical monograph about a novelist whose idiosyncratic work has enjoyed a much more continuous reception ! Scholarly, informative, and pleasurably readableThe time is right for a full consideration of Bowen's work by a critic of outstanding gifts. Maud Ellmann certainly is this. -- Seamus Deane, Keough Professor of Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame, Indiana In this remarkable book Ellmann shows us how to read Elizabeth Bowen - what we might need to know, and what we should be able to hear - without merely placing her. The sheer attentiveness of Ellmann's prose, the wit of her interests and the reach of her words, make this an exemplary study. It reminds us that writers can only rely on critics that are writers themselves. -- Adam Phillips, psychoanalyst A brilliant summation of Bowen's work, marked by economy and insight, and a command of English prose akin to Bowen's own. -- Anne Barton, Professor of English, Trinity College Cambridge Brilliant, original ! Maud Ellmann's book makes a powerful intervention in the still-shifting reputation of this great writer ... A bold, innovative, challenging study, which should be very influential. -- Hermione Lee Ellmann writes a searching, critical monograph about a novelist whose idiosyncratic work has enjoyed a much more continuous reception ! Scholarly, informative, and pleasurably readable. The time is right for a full consideration of Bowen's work by a critic of outstanding gifts. Maud Ellmann certainly is this. In this remarkable book Ellmann shows us how to read Elizabeth Bowen - what we might need to know, and what we should be able to hear - without merely placing her. The sheer attentiveness of Ellmann's prose, the wit of her interests and the reach of her words, make this an exemplary study. It reminds us that writers can only rely on critics that are writers themselves. A brilliant summation of Bowen's work, marked by economy and insight, and a command of English prose akin to Bowen's own. Brilliant, original ! Maud Ellmann's book makes a powerful intervention in the still-shifting reputation of this great writer ... A bold, innovative, challenging study, which should be very influential.
Maud Ellmann is Randy L. & Melvin R. Berlin Professor of the Development of the Novel in English at the University of Chicago. Her books include The Poetics of Impersonality: T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, The Hunger Artists: Starving, Writing, and Imprisonment, and Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism. She has also published widely on modern literature and literary theory, feminism, and deconstruction.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780748617036 |
| ISBN 10 | 0748617035 |
| Title | Elizabeth Bowen |
| Author | Maud Ellmann |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Edinburgh University Press |
| Year published | 2004-08-31 |
| Number of pages | 248 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |