Gender Dynamics in the Fiction of Lee Smith

Gender Dynamics in the Fiction of Lee Smith PDF Author: Rebecca Godwin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
In this important study, Rebecca Smith (no relation to the author of this study) uses language theory and feminist critical theory to examine Lee Smith's "critique" of gender ideology in her fiction. This book charts Lee Smith's fictional exploration of the cultural devaluation of women and of the traditional romance plot. An in-depth look at Smith's appropriation of male myth, images and language, all of which she uses to deconstruct traditional gender arrangements, the work chronologically covers Lee Smith's first nine novels and her two short story collections.

Gender Dynamics in the Fiction of Lee Smith

Gender Dynamics in the Fiction of Lee Smith PDF Author: Rebecca Godwin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Get Book

Book Description
In this important study, Rebecca Smith (no relation to the author of this study) uses language theory and feminist critical theory to examine Lee Smith's "critique" of gender ideology in her fiction. This book charts Lee Smith's fictional exploration of the cultural devaluation of women and of the traditional romance plot. An in-depth look at Smith's appropriation of male myth, images and language, all of which she uses to deconstruct traditional gender arrangements, the work chronologically covers Lee Smith's first nine novels and her two short story collections.

Dancing in the Flames

Dancing in the Flames PDF Author: Linda Byrd Cook
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786453508
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
This book examines Lee Smith's novel-length fiction and its powerful reflection of her personal search for and journey toward spiritual reconciliation. The protagonists of Smith's novels feel estranged from any sense of feminine sacredness as they struggle for a belief system that offers them hope and validation. Chapters describe how Smith has retrieved in her fiction a source of transformative power--the power of the sexual, maternal, feminine divine--in hopes of creating a new image of the total, sacred female whose sexuality, creativity, spirituality, and maternity can reside comfortably in the bodies of everyday heroines.

Lee Smith

Lee Smith PDF Author: Mary Ellen Snodgrass
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476636664
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
This literary companion surveys the works of Lee Smith, a Southern author lauded for her autobiographical familiarity with Appalachian settings and characters. Her dialogue captures the distinct voices of mountain people and their perceptions of local and world events, ranging from the Civil War to ecology and modernization. Mental and physical disability and the Southern cultural norm of including the disabled as both family and community members are recurring themes in Smith's writing. An A to Z arrangement of entries incorporates specific titles, and themes such as belonging, healing and death, humor, parenting and religion.

Understanding Lee Smith

Understanding Lee Smith PDF Author: Danielle N. Johnson
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1611178819
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
A comprehensive treatment of the life and work of this award-winning feminist Appalachian writer Since the release of her first novel, The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed, in 1968, Lee Smith has published nearly twenty books, including novels, short stories, and memoirs. She has received an O. Henry Award, Sir Walter Raleigh Award, Robert Penn Warren Prize for Fiction, and a Reader's Digest Award; and her New York Times best-selling novel, The Last Girls, won the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. While Smith has garnered academic and critical respect for many of her novels, such as Black Mountain Breakdown, Oral History, and Fair and Tender Ladies, her writing has been viewed by some as lightweight fiction or even "chick lit." In Understanding Lee Smith Danielle N. Johnson offers a comprehensive analysis of Smith's work, including her memoir, Dimestore, treating her as a major Appalachian and feminist voice. Johnson begins with a biographical sketch of Smith's upbringing in Appalachia, her formal education, and her career. She explicates the themes and stylistic qualities that have come to characterize Smith's writing and outlines the criticism of Smith's work, particularly that which focuses on female subjectivity, artistry, religion, history, and place in her fiction. Too often, Johnson argues, Smith's consistent and powerful messages about artistry, gender roles, and historical discourse are missed or undervalued by readers and critics caught up in her quirky characters and dialogue. In Understanding Lee Smith, Johnson offers an analysis of Smith's oeuvre chronologically to study her growth as a writer and to highlight major events in her career and the influence they had on her work, including a major shift in the early 1990s to writing about families, communities, and women living in the mountains. Johnson reveals how Smith has refined her talent for creating nuanced voices and a narrative web of multiple perspectives and evolved into a writer of fine literary fiction worthy of critical study.

Secular Steeples 2nd edition

Secular Steeples 2nd edition PDF Author: Conrad Ostwalt
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441123148
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
An exploration of secularization in America, this book provides students with an innovative way of understanding the relationship between religion and secular culture. In Secular Steeples, Conrad Ostwalt challenges long-held assumptions about the relationship between religion and culture and about the impact of secularization. Moving away from the idea that religion will diminish as secularization continues, Ostwalt identifies areas of popular culture where secular and sacred views and objectives interact and enrich each other. The book demonstrates how religious institutions use the secular and popular media of television, movies, and music to make sacred teachings relevant. From megachurches to sports arenas, the Bible to Harry Potter, biker churches to virtual worship communities, Ostwalt demonstrates how religion persists across cultural forms, secular and sacred, with secular culture expressing religious messages and sometimes containing more authentic religious content than official religious teachings. An ideal text for anyone studying religion and popular culture, each chapter provides questions for discussion, a list of important terms and guided readings.

Cultural Intermarriage in Southern Appalachia

Cultural Intermarriage in Southern Appalachia PDF Author: Katerina Prajznerova
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135942013
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 165

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Book Description
First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Secular Steeples

Secular Steeples PDF Author: Conrad Ostwalt
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1563383616
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Conrad Ostwalt explores the confluence of religion and popular cultural forms in the secular world, demonstrating that a secular religiosity has co-opted some of the functions previously reserved for religions institutions.

Maternal Body and Voice in Toni Morrison, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Lee Smith

Maternal Body and Voice in Toni Morrison, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Lee Smith PDF Author: Paula Gallant Eckard
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826264034
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description


Conversations with Lee Smith

Conversations with Lee Smith PDF Author: Lee Smith
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781578063505
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
These interviews and profiles tell the story of one woman's discovery of her coal-mining hometown as a potential "literary place" and how she used them to pursue her dream career.

The New Southern Girl

The New Southern Girl PDF Author: Caren J. Town
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786482036
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
Much has been written about America's troubled teens, particularly endangered teenage girls. Works like Mary Pipher's Reviving Ophelia and many others have contributed to the general perception that contemporary young women are in a state of crisis. Parents, educators, social scientists, and other concerned individuals worry that our nation's girls are losing their ambition, moral direction, and self-esteem as they enter adolescence--which can then lead them to promiscuous sex, anorexia, drug abuse, and at the very least, declining math scores. In spite of evidence to the contrary in life and literature, this bleak picture is seldom challenged, but a good place to begin may be with recent literary representations of young women, fictional and autobiographical, which show proud young women who are highly focused and use their brains and good humor to work toward satisfying adult lives. This book addresses the ways in which 12 women writers use their heroines' stories to challenge commonly held and frequently damaging notions of adolescence, femininity, and regional identity. The book begins with a chapter on sociological and literary theories of adolescent female development. This chapter also includes theoretically informed discussions of young adult fiction and Southern literature. Chapters that follow focus on adolescent heroines in the novels and autobiographies of the contemporary Southern women writers Anne Tyler, Bobbie Ann Mason, Josephine Humphreys, Dorothy Allison, Kaye Gibbons, Tina Ansa, Janisse Ray and Jill McCorkle and young adult writers Katherine Paterson, Mildred Taylor and Cynthia Voigt. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.