Waubonsee Community College

Myths and fairy tales in contemporary women's fiction, from Atwood to Morrison, Sharon Rose Wilson

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 165-191) and index

index present

non fiction

Myths and fairy tales in contemporary women's fiction

bibliography

191318174

Sharon Rose Wilson

"Myths and Fairy Tales in Contemporary Women's Fiction explores contemporary feminist, postmodernist, and postcolonial women writers' use and revisions of fairy tales and myths. With close readings of works ranging from Margaret Atwood to Doris Lessing to Toni Morrison, Wilson examines meanings of myths and fairy tales as well as their varying techniques, images, intertexts, and genres. Although the writers represent several different nationalities and racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, they employ a type of postcolonial literature that urges readers and societies beyond colonization. Wilson argues that the use of myths and fairy tales generally convey characters'transformation from alienation and symbolic amputation to greater consciousness, community, and wholeness, and it is in and through story that characters construct a hybrid way of establishing themselves in the larger world."--Jacket

from Atwood to Morrison

Introduction -- Margaret Atwood's monstrous, dismembered, cannibalized, and (sometimes) reborn female bodies : The robber bride and other texts -- Fitcher's and Frankenstein's gaze in Atwood's Oryx and crake -- The writer as crone goddess in Atwood's The Penelopiad and Lessing's The memoirs of a survivor -- Mythic quests for the word and postcolonial identity : Lessing's The story of General Dann and Mara's daughter, Griot and the snow dog, and Morrison's Beloved -- Erdrich's community as home : The wizard of Oz, the Ramayana, and Greek and Native American myth in The beet queen -- Silenced women in Rosario Ferre's The youngest doll : "Sleeping Beauty," "The red shoes," "Cinderella," "Fitcher's bird" -- Enchantment, transformation, and rebirth in Iris Murdoch's The green knight -- Bluebeard's Forbidden room in Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea -- Fairy tales and myth in Keri Hulme's The bone people -- Conclusion