Writing war : fiction, gender, and memory / Lynne Hanley.

By:

Hanley, Lynne, 1943-

Material type: Text

TextPublication details: Amherst, Mass. : University of Massachusetts Press, �1991.Description: 1 online resource (151 pages)Content type:

text

Media type:

computer

Carrier type:

online resource

ISBN:

0585083576
9780585083575
1122053053
9781122053051

Subject(s):

Genre/Form:

Additional physical formats: Print version:: Writing war.DDC classification:

823/.9109358 20

LOC classification:

PR888.W37 H36 1991eb

Online resources:

Click here to access online

Contents:

War stories -- The war zone: the Great War and modern memory -- The time of her life -- The romance of Oxbridge: Virginia Woolf -- Little women -- To El Salvador: Joan Didion -- Lydia among the uniforms -- Reconstructing Vietnam: Doris Lessing and Joan Didion -- War torn -- War and postmodern memory -- Planting tulips.

Action note:

digitized 2011 committed to preserve

Summary: Americans in this century have been largely spared the ravages of war. Though some have fought and died on foreign fronts, few have experienced invasion, occupation, or bombing at home, and so our narratives of war are particularly potent in shaping our imagination, indeed our very memory of war. And since how we imagine (or remember, or forget) war has a great deal to do with our propensity to make war, the question occurs, What is it in our literature of war, in our modern cultural memory of war, that has led us in this century to make war again and again, and to export our organized violence to just about every corner of the world? Impelled by this question, Lynne Hanley here explores the ways in which literature shapes our perceptions of war. The book contains five critical essays on English and American writings about the wars of this century and six short stories which render the experience of war from a feminist perspective. The combination of fiction and nonfiction, unorthodox though it may be, represents Hanley's deliberate effort to open new ways of thinking about war and to challenge the dichotomy between criticism and creative writing. The first essay, an insightful critique of Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory, takes issue with its focus on the combat experiences of the individual soldier, as though his were the only real human tragedy in the arena of war. Other essays address the writings of Virginia Woolf, Joan Didion, and Doris Lessing--women whose work calls into question the accepted terrain of war literature and explores new territory beyond the men-at-the-front accounts. Hanley's short stories further redefine the combat zone. Reexamining the themes of the critical essays, the stories explore the experiences of women, children, and other noncombatants on the "home front." These narratives displace the soldier as the mouth-piece of war, reminding us that the makers of war are not its only casualties.

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Americans in this century have been largely spared the ravages of war. Though some have fought and died on foreign fronts, few have experienced invasion, occupation, or bombing at home, and so our narratives of war are particularly potent in shaping our imagination, indeed our very memory of war. And since how we imagine (or remember, or forget) war has a great deal to do with our propensity to make war, the question occurs, What is it in our literature of war, in our modern cultural memory of war, that has led us in this century to make war again and again, and to export our organized violence to just about every corner of the world? Impelled by this question, Lynne Hanley here explores the ways in which literature shapes our perceptions of war. The book contains five critical essays on English and American writings about the wars of this century and six short stories which render the experience of war from a feminist perspective. The combination of fiction and nonfiction, unorthodox though it may be, represents Hanley's deliberate effort to open new ways of thinking about war and to challenge the dichotomy between criticism and creative writing. The first essay, an insightful critique of Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory, takes issue with its focus on the combat experiences of the individual soldier, as though his were the only real human tragedy in the arena of war. Other essays address the writings of Virginia Woolf, Joan Didion, and Doris Lessing--women whose work calls into question the accepted terrain of war literature and explores new territory beyond the men-at-the-front accounts. Hanley's short stories further redefine the combat zone. Reexamining the themes of the critical essays, the stories explore the experiences of women, children, and other noncombatants on the "home front." These narratives displace the soldier as the mouth-piece of war, reminding us that the makers of war are not its only casualties.

Print version record.

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Electronic reproduction. [S.l.] : HathiTrust Digital Library, 2011. MiAaHDL

Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. MiAaHDL

http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212

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