Imagining characters
About this book
In this innovative and wide-ranging book, Byatt and the psychoanalyst Ignes Sodre bring their different sensibilities to bear on six novels they have read and loved: Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, Charlotte Bronte's Villette, George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, Willa Cather's The Professor's House, Iris Murdoch's An Unofficial Rose, and Toni Morrison's Beloved. The results are nothing less than an education in the ways literature grips its readers and at times, transforms their very lives.
Whether they are examining the bewildering passivity of Jane Austen's heroines, exploring Willa Cather's code of solitude, or reading Toni Morrison's Beloved as a novel about spite, Byatt and Sodre are witty, humane, funny, and profound. For anyone who loves Byatt's novels, for anyone who loves literature, Imagining Characters is indispensable, a work of criticism that returns us to the books it discusses with renewed respect and wonder.
Subjects
Psychoanalysis and literatureInterviewsHistory and criticismWomen authorsWomen and literatureEnglish fictionAmerican fictionCharacters and characteristics in literatureEnglish fiction, women authorsAmerican fiction, women authorsAmerican fiction, history and criticismEnglish fiction, history and criticismInterviewsbyatt, a. s. (antonia susan) , 1936-Interviewssodré, ignêsCriticism and interpretationausten, jane , 1775-1817Criticism and interpretationbrontë, charlotte , 1816-1855Criticism and interpretationeliot, george , 1819-1880Criticism and interpretationcather, willa , 1873-1947Criticism and interpretationmurdoch, irisCriticism and interpretationmorrison, toniEnglish fiction--women authors--history and criticismAmerican fiction--women authors--history and criticismWomen and literature--great britainWomen and literature--united states