Djuna Barnes' Consuming Fictions

Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) was a pioneering female journalist, experimental novelist, playwright, and poet whose writings anticipated many of the preoccupations of poststructuralist and feminist thought. Her new book 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. 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. Nightwood is contextualized as a pivotal text which poses questions about the limits of subversion, positioning The Antiphon (1958) as an analysis of why such boundaries are sometimes necessary. Barnes' oeuvre offers a profound analysis of the relationship between culture, the individual, and textual expression.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 206 pages
Publication date: 31 March 2021
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) was a trailblazing female journalist, experimental novelist, playwright, and poet whose impact on literary modernism was profound and whose writings foreshadowed many of the concerns of poststructuralist and feminist thought. In her latest book, the author 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 discussions 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 contextualized as a pivotal text that 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 demonstrates 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.

Weight: 324g
Dimension: 154 x 235 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781138619463