Motherhood and Creativity in Contemporary Self-Life Writing

Writers and Mothers
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-032-60982-9
Verlag: Taylor & Francis

Buch, Englisch, 190 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 426 g

Reihe: Routledge Research in Women's Literature

This book aims to study the representation of motherhood in self-life writing by English-speaking authors. It highlights the particular issues women writers are faced with when they try to combine their vocation as artists with their duties towards their children. For those women who claim their right to be both mothers and writers, several cultural myths need to be taken down, chief among which is the representations that we have of what being an artist should be like, as well as the role a mother should have towards her children. This book looks at self-life writing by women from English-speaking countries to reveal the common themes and tropes which recur in texts written on the subject of motherhood, by looking at them from both a literary and a cultural perspective. It also aims to demonstrate that a new generation of women writers is taking up the subject and forging a new literary tradition.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Braun, Alice

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments



Introduction – A Sound-Proof Room of One’s Own



Chapter 1 – The Impossible Subject



Chapter 2 – To Have and Have Not



Chapter 3 – On Pregnancy and Childbirth



Chapter 4 – Mother Writing



Chapter 5 – Bad Mothers



Conclusion – Throwing the Baby out with the Bathwater



Index

Über Autor(innen)

Alice Braun is a senior lecturer at the Université de Paris Nanterre in France. She has been researching self-life writing by women and is the author of several articles on Janet Frame, Rachel Cusk, Sylvia Plath, and Doris Lessing. Lately, she has been working on the representation of motherhood in literary texts, and particularly childbirth.