Rebecca West's Subversive Use of Hybrid Genres

Download or read book Rebecca West's Subversive Use of Hybrid Genres written by Laura Cowan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-05-21 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing new insights from genre theory to bear on the work of the journalist and novelist Rebecca West, this study explores how West's use of and combinations of multiple genres (often in single works) was informed and furthered by her subversive feminist goals. Rebecca West's Subversive Use of Hybrid Genres analyzes West's sense of genres as dynamic and strategic processes with transgressive political ends rather than as fixed and reified taxonomies, a radical new approach at the time that is now mirrored in much contemporary theory. Surveying her oeuvre from this point of view, the book goes on to examine systematically West's writing from 1911-1941, including her early journalism and criticism, such novels as The Return of the Soldier and her controversial multi-genre epic Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.