Women and Discourse in the Fiction of Marguerite Duras: Love, Legends, Language

by Susan D. Cohen

Overview

The first comprehensive study of the narrative and stylistic characteristics of all of Marguerite Duras' major works. Through close textual readings with a particular focus on women's access to language, this book shows how Duras critiques and subverts dominant discourse. Duras' textual strategies are described within a discussion of narrativity which also addresses factors of race and class. Cohen demonstrates how Duras achieves the famous ritual atmosphere of her prose through precise techniques which connect to her critique of representation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780333575451
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	06/18/1993
Series:	Love, Legend, Language
Edition description:	1993
Pages:	239
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Susan D. Cohen teaches French literature at New York University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements - Introduction - Notes - PART 1: STRATEGIES OF NARRATION - 'Ignorance' and Textuality - Intertextualities - Sleeping Beauties: Discourse, Gender, Genre in the 'Erotic' Texts - PART 2: TOWARDS A POETICS OF DURAS' PROSE - Elements of a Style - Legends - Bibliography - Glossary - Index

What People are Saying About This

Leah D. Hewitt

The scholarship is superb: thorough, probing, original.... Cohen is a powerful, careful reader who is the first to explain in all its intricacy the famous Durasian 'atmosphere' as a function of very specific narrative strategies. Her discussions of feminine listening offer a strong feminist argument about an affirmative women's discourse.

Editorial Reviews

"The scholarship is superb: thorough, probing, original. . . . Cohen is a powerful, careful reader who is the first to explain in all its intricacy the famous Durasian 'atmosphere' as a function of very specific narrative strategies. Her discussions of feminine listening offer a strong feminist argument about an affirmative women's discourse."—Leah D. Hewitt, Author of Autobiographical Tightropes: Simone de Beauvoir, Nathalie Sarraute, Margurite Duras, Monique Wittig, and Maryse Condé

From the Publisher