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Overview
Women writers have often felt alienated from both the Bible and the canonical literary tradition that has been built on its foundation. Yet contemporary American women writers seem to be as haunted by the Bible as their nineteenth-century predecessors. This study of feminist biblical revision argues that women writers' contentious dialogues with the Bible ultimately reconstruct the writers' own basis of authority. The author traces the evolution of this phenomenon from the mid-nineteenth century to the present and analyzes biblical revision in works by Emily Dickinson, H.D., Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Gloria Naylor, and Toni Morrison.
Synopsis
Women writers have often felt alienated from both the Bible and the canonical literary tradition that has been built on its foundation. Yet contemporary American women writers seem to be as haunted by the Bible as their nineteenth-century predecessors. This study of feminist biblical revision argues that women writers' contentious dialogues with the Bible ultimately reconstruct the writers' own basis of authority. The author traces the evolution of this phenomenon from the mid-nineteenth century to the present and analyzes biblical revision in works by Emily Dickinson, H.D., Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Gloria Naylor, and Toni Morrison.
Booknews
Investigates why women writers who cannot claim the Bible as their spiritual or linguistic inheritance engage it in their poetry and fiction. After exploring the politics and poetics of Biblical revision and contemporary women's poetry, Brown (English, State U. of West Georgia) looks at the work of Emily Dickinson, H. D., Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Gloria Naylor, and Toni Morrison. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknew.com)