Description

A critical reading of Rhys's entire oeuvre, including the stories and autobiography, informed by Rhys's own manuscripts and first published in 1999. Elaine Savory's study, first published in 1999, is a critical reading of Rhys's entire oeuvre and is informed by Rhys's own manuscripts. Designed both for the serious scholar and those unfamiliar with Rhys's writing, Savory offers a comprehensive account of this most complex and enigmatic of writers. Elaine Savory's study, first published in 1999, is a critical reading of Rhys's entire oeuvre and is informed by Rhys's own manuscripts. Designed both for the serious scholar and those unfamiliar with Rhys's writing, Savory offers a comprehensive account of this most complex and enigmatic of writers. Jean Rhys has long been central to debates in feminist, modernist, Caribbean, British and postcolonial writing. Elaine Savory's study, first published in 1999, incorporates and modifies previous critical approaches and is a critical reading of Rhys's entire oeuvre, including the stories and autobiography, and is informed by Rhys's own manuscripts. Designed both for the serious scholar on Rhys and those unfamiliar with her writing, Savory's book insists on the importance of a Caribbean-centred approach to Rhys, and shows how this context profoundly affects her literary style. Informed by contemporary arguments on race, gender, class and nationality, Savory explores Rhys's stylistic innovations - her use of colours, her exploitation of the trope of performance, her experiments with creative non-fiction and her incorporation of the metaphysical into her texts. This study offers a comprehensive account of the life and work of this most complex and enigmatic of writers. Preface; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations and note on the text; Chronology; 1. Living on both sides, living to write; 2. Registering protest: The Left Bank and Quartet; 3. A Caribbean woman lost in Europe?: After Leaving Mr MacKenzie and the question of gender; 4. Writing colour, writing Caribbean: Voyage in the Dark and the politics of colour; 5. Dangerous spirit, bitterly amused: Good Morning, Midnight; 6. People in and out of place: spatial arrangements in Wide Sargasso Sea; 7. Brief encounters: Rhys and the craft of the short story; 8. Performance arts: the theatre of autobiography and the role of the personal essay; 9. The Helen of our wars: cultural politics and Jean Rhys criticism; Notes; Select bibliography; Index. "...careful assessment of existing scholarship and... creative contribution to that body of work. Strongly recommended for all academic collections." Choice "...the book is painstakingly researched...and comprehensive in that it covers the entire corpus of published and unpublished work, from early short stories to the late unfinished autobiography...The book, all the more insightful because Savory lived much of her life in the Caribbean, manages to be scholarly yet unstuffy; the writing is fluid and engaging...this is because Savory combines her expertise as a literary critic - her work has appeared in numerous journals which focus on Caribbean and post-colonial literature - with a poet's sensitivity to language." The Caribbean Writer "Despite the volume of critical work devoted to Jean Rhys, she remains an unplaceable writer. She was a modernist who insisted that she had never read many of her contemporaries...Throughout the book, avory martials extensive archival material in support of her argument, an