Myths and Fairy Tales in Contemporary Women's Fiction

SHARON R. WILSON is Professor of English and Women's Studies, University of Northern Colorado, USA.

• Atwood's Monstrous, Dismembered, Cannibalized, and (Sometimes) Reborn Female Bodies: The Robber Bride and Other TextsFitcher's and Frankenstein's Gaze in Oryx and CrakeThe Writer as Crone Goddess in Atwood's The Penelopiad and Lessing's Memoirs of a Survivor Mythic Quests for the Word and Postcolonial Identity: Lessing's The Story of Colonel Dann, Mara's Daughter, Griot and The Snow Dog and Morrison's Beloved Reading Erdrich's The Beet Queen : Demeter, The Wizard of Oz, The Ramayana, and Native American MythSilenced Women in Ferre's The Youngest Doll : 'The Red Shoes,' Cinderella,' 'Fitcher's Bird'Enchantment, Transformation, and Rebirth in Iris Murdoch's The Green Knight Bluebeard's Forbidden Room in Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea Fairy Tales and Myth in Hulme's The Bone People

"Bringing together this dissimilar group of authors is a major achievement. The complexity of Wilson's theoretical perspective is matched by the complexity of the relationships she intuits among these writers. The clarity of some of the insights in the book is breathtaking." - Carol L. Beran, Professor of English, Saint Mary's College of California Wilson has produced an admirable, eminently useful study that functions on two levels. First, it provides insightful textual analysis of works by Atwood, Doris Lessing, Toni Morrison, Louise Erdrich, Rosario Ferre, Iris Murdoch, Jean Rhys, and Keri Hulme. This is a diverse group of writers, yet Wilson draws convincing parallels and links among the works as feminist, postcolonial, and postmodern texts. Second, the book demonstrates these writers' varying uses of intertextuality, particularly fairy tales such as 'Fitcher's Bird,' 'Bluebeard,' 'Sleeping Beauty,' and 'The Robber Bridegroom' along with myths from a variety of cultures ... Wilson succeeds in overturning some common biases and misconceptions about contemporary women's literature ... Highly recommended." - Choice