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Rebecca West Heroism, Rebellion, and the Female Epic
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Bernard Schweizer
ISBN: 0-313-32360-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-313-32360-7
184 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 9/30/2002
List Price: $59.95 (UK Sterling Price: £41.95)
Availability: In Stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
Description: Rebecca West (1892-1983) was a prominent English critic, journalist, and novelist. She contributed to feminist and socialist magazines, had a lengthy relationship with H. G. Wells, and was named Dame of the British Empire in 1959. Her literary reputation declined after 1970 and was revived in the mid-1980s, with the posthumous publication of three novels and a memoir, as wells as the reissue of several earlier works. With the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon catapulted her into the limelight and brought her wide critical attention. This book offers a much-needed assessment of her literary career.

Schweizer's volume analyzes West's spiritual and philosophical ideas, asserting that her novels and travel writings betray an epic impulse and therefore reinvent epic heroism in feminist terms. The first part of this study examines her fiction, including, The Judge and the trilogy of novels about the Aubrey family. Philosophical and conceptual elements in her fictional and nonfictional prose are explored, relating her ideas to other thinkers. The volume closes with a look at West's reworking of epic conventions in her travel writings, including her unfinished Survivors in Mexico.
Table of Contents:
  • Introduction
    Rebecca West's Epic Novels
    Heroism and Religious Revolt in The Judge
    Female Quests in the Aubrey Trilogy
    Philosophical Interlude
    Rebecca West's World of Ideas
    Rebecca West's Epic Travel Writing
    Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Modern Female Epic
    "Survivors in Mexico": Genesis of an Epic Fragment
    Heroism and Religious Revolt in Survivors in Mexico
    Conclusion
    Bibliography
    Index
About the Author: BERNARD SCHWEIZER is Assistant Professor of English Literature at Long Island University. Born and raised in Switzerland, he taught at the University of Zurich for three years. He is author of Radicals on the Road: The Politics of English Travel Writing in the 1930s (2001), and editor of Rebecca West's Survivors in Mexico (2003).
LCC Class: 828
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