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Enacting Past and Present

The Memory Theaters of Djuna Barnes, Ingeborg Bachmann, and Marguerite Duras

Michaela M. Grobbel

This far-reaching study of women's literature sheds new light onto the ways we think about memory, modernism, postmodernism, feminism. In Enacting Past and Present, author Michaela M. Grobbel discusses novels by Djuna Barnes, Ingeborg Bachmann, and Marguerite Duras. According to the author, these works show us that fascinating shifts in 'memory texts' have been taking place in the twentieth century, indicating the need for different approaches to understanding memory. Through a discussion of Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, and the work of contemporary scholars in feminism and cultural studies, Grobbel focuses on these texts as types of performance that lead to interesting forms of 're-presenting' memory. These theaters of memory foreground the present but also critically demonstrate the complex relationship of the present to the past. Grobbel offers her readers new ways to think about autobiography, performance, and the process of memory, enriching currrent scholarship on feminism and literary modernism.
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Lexington Books
Pages: 222 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-0-7391-0756-0 • Hardback • November 2003 • $114.00 • (£88.00)
978-0-7391-3488-7 • Paperback • February 2009 • $57.99 • (£45.00)
Subjects: Literary Criticism / General, Literary Criticism / Feminist, Literary Criticism / American / General, Literary Criticism / European / General, Literary Criticism / European / French, Literary Criticism / European / German, Literary Criticism / Women Authors, Literary Criticism / Semiotics & Theory
Michaela M. Grobbel teaches in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Sonoma State University in Northern California. She teaches German, world literature and theater, and interdisciplinary courses in the humanities. Grobbel studied at the University of Bonn in Germany, and received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California in Los Angeles. Her research and academic publications focus on twentieth-century women's writing and feminist theory, cultural criticism, and ethnic minority literature, especially German-speaking Romany autobiography.
Chapter 1 Setting the Scene: The Art of Memory as Writing and Performance
Chapter 2 In Memory of the Lost Body: Performance of Resistance in Djuna Barnes Nightwood
Chapter 3 The Memory Theater of Ingeborg Bachmann's "Malina"
Chapter 4 Strolling Through the Memory Palace of Oblivion: "Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein" by Marguerite Duras
Chapter 5 Memory Performances in Literature and the Arts
Michaela Grobbel's careful and insightful readings of modernist prose texts by Djuna Barnes (Nightwood 1936), Ingeborg Bachmann (Malina 1971), and Marguerite Duras (Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein 1964) explore a 'new feminist art of memory,' that—in contrast to the classical rhetorical art of memory—is centered on the return of the (female) body within the production of memory and writing. . . . This study is particularly relevant in light of the fact that neither the 'gender of memory' nor the aesthetic transposition of memory as inflected by gender have been the focus of recent research. . . . Enacting Past and Present is an insightful, provocative, and discerning contribution to the evolving field of writing, memory, and culture.
— Susanne Baackmann; The German Quarterly


Enacting Past and Present invites us to reconsider memory as process and performance; it does so through insightful commentary on three important women's texts; and it makes a convincing case for the importance of restoring the materiality of gender to any such consideration.
— Karen Kaivola; Biography


Enacting Past and Present

The Memory Theaters of Djuna Barnes, Ingeborg Bachmann, and Marguerite Duras

Cover Image
Hardback
Paperback
Summary
Summary
  • This far-reaching study of women's literature sheds new light onto the ways we think about memory, modernism, postmodernism, feminism. In Enacting Past and Present, author Michaela M. Grobbel discusses novels by Djuna Barnes, Ingeborg Bachmann, and Marguerite Duras. According to the author, these works show us that fascinating shifts in 'memory texts' have been taking place in the twentieth century, indicating the need for different approaches to understanding memory. Through a discussion of Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, and the work of contemporary scholars in feminism and cultural studies, Grobbel focuses on these texts as types of performance that lead to interesting forms of 're-presenting' memory. These theaters of memory foreground the present but also critically demonstrate the complex relationship of the present to the past. Grobbel offers her readers new ways to think about autobiography, performance, and the process of memory, enriching currrent scholarship on feminism and literary modernism.
Details
Details
  • Lexington Books
    Pages: 222 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½
    978-0-7391-0756-0 • Hardback • November 2003 • $114.00 • (£88.00)
    978-0-7391-3488-7 • Paperback • February 2009 • $57.99 • (£45.00)
    Subjects: Literary Criticism / General, Literary Criticism / Feminist, Literary Criticism / American / General, Literary Criticism / European / General, Literary Criticism / European / French, Literary Criticism / European / German, Literary Criticism / Women Authors, Literary Criticism / Semiotics & Theory
Author
Author
  • Michaela M. Grobbel teaches in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Sonoma State University in Northern California. She teaches German, world literature and theater, and interdisciplinary courses in the humanities. Grobbel studied at the University of Bonn in Germany, and received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California in Los Angeles. Her research and academic publications focus on twentieth-century women's writing and feminist theory, cultural criticism, and ethnic minority literature, especially German-speaking Romany autobiography.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
  • Chapter 1 Setting the Scene: The Art of Memory as Writing and Performance
    Chapter 2 In Memory of the Lost Body: Performance of Resistance in Djuna Barnes Nightwood
    Chapter 3 The Memory Theater of Ingeborg Bachmann's "Malina"
    Chapter 4 Strolling Through the Memory Palace of Oblivion: "Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein" by Marguerite Duras
    Chapter 5 Memory Performances in Literature and the Arts
Reviews
Reviews
  • Michaela Grobbel's careful and insightful readings of modernist prose texts by Djuna Barnes (Nightwood 1936), Ingeborg Bachmann (Malina 1971), and Marguerite Duras (Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein 1964) explore a 'new feminist art of memory,' that—in contrast to the classical rhetorical art of memory—is centered on the return of the (female) body within the production of memory and writing. . . . This study is particularly relevant in light of the fact that neither the 'gender of memory' nor the aesthetic transposition of memory as inflected by gender have been the focus of recent research. . . . Enacting Past and Present is an insightful, provocative, and discerning contribution to the evolving field of writing, memory, and culture.
    — Susanne Baackmann; The German Quarterly


    Enacting Past and Present invites us to reconsider memory as process and performance; it does so through insightful commentary on three important women's texts; and it makes a convincing case for the importance of restoring the materiality of gender to any such consideration.
    — Karen Kaivola; Biography


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