Multiple Discourses, Multiple Meanings: Jeanette Winterson's Language of Multiplicity and Variety. Agnieszka Miksza

Multiple Discourses, Multiple Meanings: Jeanette Winterson's Language of Multiplicity and Variety

Agnieszka Miksza

      Multiple Discourses, Multiple
       Meanings: Jeanette Winterson's
       Language of
       Multiplicity and Variety

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available online at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.

Publication of this book was financially supported by the University of Łódź

Reviewed by Maria Edelson and Julia Fiedorczuk-Glinecka

ISSN 2627-0684

ISBN 978-3-631-80389-9 (Print)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-81244-0 (E-PDF)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-81245-7 (EPUB)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-81246-4 (MOBI)

DOI 10.3726/b16558

Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften

Berlin 2020

Peter Lang – Berlin ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙

Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien

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This publication has been peer reviewed.

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About the author

Agnieszka Miksza is currently working as an assistant professor at the University of Szczecin. She completed her doctoral dissertation on Winterson’s works at the University of Łódź (Faculty of Philology) in 2017. Her academic interests are contemporary poetic prose and biblical intertextual references in contemporary British and American prose.

About the book

Jeanette Winterson is a contemporary British writer whose oeuvre is often defined as postmodern, although the writer herself often underlines her modernist roots. Her novels are inspired by the works of T.S.Eliot and Virginia Woolf. The following book is aimed at researching the poetic devices used by Winterson in her prose. Five novels were analysed: The Passion, Sexing the Cherry, Written on the Body, Gut Symmetries and The Powerbook. Some of the most important aspects of the book are the intertextual references to other literary works, especially to the poetry and essays by T.S. Eliot who is the biggest inspiration in Winterson’s works. The book is an attempt to define the Wintersonian style, and it presents a variety of methods used by Winterson to achieve the poetic quality in her prose. The research demonstrates both the prosaic and poetic elements of Winterson’s works which illustrate the connection between transparency and opacity of language. What is interesting is the notion of the literal which may appear mundane and unpoetic. However, this analysis of Winterson’s novels shows that the literal is an essential element of poetry.

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Contents

Introduction

1 Between Poetry and Prose: Genres of the Middle

1 Introduction

1.1 The Prose Poem as a Genre

1.2 The Prose Poem and the British Tradition

1.3 Prose Poem and Intertextuality

2 Winterson and the Poetry of Fiction

2.1 Winterson and Her Views on Writing

2.1 Winterson’s Prose and Poetry

2.2 Winterson and Repetition

2.3 Winterson and Language (of Poetry)