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Chargement... Anne Brontëpar Maria Frawley
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Appartient à la série éditorialeTwayne's English Authors (524)
Provides in-depth analysis of the life, works, career, and critical importance of Anne Bronte.
"And none can hear my secret call / Or see the silent tears I weep!" These words from Anne Bronte's poem "The Doubter's Prayer" address the dual function of secrecy and silence, two of several key ideas explored in Bronte's prose and poetry. Secrecy, silence, isolation, and exile are all interrelated notions that her characters, like Bronte herself, not only struggled with but embraced. Like her fictional and poetic characters, Anne Bronte contended with the impact of physical and psychological confinement on one's identity, even describing herself in one of her last letters as a "silent invalid stranger." Her self-assessment was echoed by others who knew her, among them her sister Charlotte, who once described her as woman who "covered her mind, and especially her feelings, with a sort of nun-like veil."
Anne Bronte, a new book in the Twayne English Authors Series, challenges the assumption that such labels point to artistic or personal weaknesses on Bronte's part. Rather, Maria Frawley, the author of previous studies of Victorian women writers, relates them to Bronte's life experiences and to her ongoing interest in self-understanding, self-representation, and social identity. Within Bronte's writings, Frawley examines a distinction between the characters' private and public selves and analyzes Bronte's understanding of the social construction of identities. Unique in Bronte family studies, this book acknowledges Anne's relationship to her more famous sisters but focuses on her individual artistic and intellectual achievements. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)823.8Literature English English fiction Victorian period 1837-1900Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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This focus provides for a Bakhtinian approach to meaning that emphasizes the heterogeneity of social voices, of the multiple "selves" fashioned and invoked by individuals. In turn, a variety of poststructuralist theories has made it fashionable to dismiss the notion of an organic, unified self entirely and to adopt in its place the less essentialist concept of subject positions.
Once get past the academese, however, and there is interesting material on Anne's poetry (though in no way comparable to Janet Gezari's superb study of Emily's poetry, Last Things) as well as a substantial discussion of the use of Helen's (Wildfell Hall) diary.
Unfortunately, the citations to passages in the novels seem to be to the original T.C. Newby first editions, which isn't very useful to a reader who won't have access to such rarities. Frawley does use the 1979 Chitham edition of the poems, which likely will not be available to the average reader either; but in fairness here, there really isn't a conveniently available and authoritative collection of Anne's poems, in contrast with Janet Gezari's Penguin edition of Emily's complete poems.
For the sake of quibbling, I'll also note a couple of errors in biographical details. Emily and Anne did not in their Gondal juvenilia break off from Charlotte and Branwell's Angria juvenilia when Charlotte "left home to join the two eldest sisters at the Cowan Bridge school" (p. 26); the break occurred later, when Charlotte left for Margaret Wooler's school at Roe Head. In fact, when Charlotte and her two older sisters attended Cowan Bridge (and the two older girls died) in 1825, Charlotte was only nine, Branwell eight, Emily seven, and Anne five (ages approximate).
Also, I'm not sure I'd call William Smith Williams a "publisher" (p. 28) but, rather, an employee of Charlotte's publisher, George Smith of Smith Elder & Co.
More seriously, though, I don't agree with Frawley's assertion that Anne, by "traveling to London with Charlotte Brontë to prove her separate existence to a doubting publisher," was "actively and vehemently ... establish[ing] her own autonomous identity as an author" (p. 29). The trip by Charlotte and Anne to the Smith Elder offices was actually motivated by Charlotte's desire to prove to George Smith that she, Charlotte, was not the author of Wuthering Heights or Agnes Grey, which Emily's and Anne's unscrupulous publisher had claimed were written by the author of the best-selling Jane Eyre, exposing Charlotte to a complaint from George Smith that Charlotte had reneged on an agreement to furnish Smith Elder her subsequent novels. This isn't a mere quibble on my part considering that Frawley uses this episode to portray Anne as a self-assertive personality, a view that is important to the thesis of Frawley's book. In fact, though here I'm speculating, I suspect Anne accompanied Charlotte because the reclusive Emily positively refused to go along and Anne, generally a conciliator, was trying to keep the peace between her two older sisters.
In any event, 3½*** to Maria Frawley for her contribution to the relatively ignored Brontë sister, but only 3½*** in view partly of some factual errors but more seriously because of the book's tone of academese. ( )