Exploring Cultural Identities in Jean Rhys’ Fiction

Cristina-Georgiana Voicu

Open Access Published by De Gruyter Open Poland 2014

Exploring Cultural Identities in Jean Rhys’ Fiction

Cristina-Georgiana Voicu

https://doi.org/10.2478/9788376560687

Overview
Contents

About this book

OPEN ACCESS

Using a theoretical approach and a critical summary, combining the perspectives in the postcolonial theory, psychoanalysis and narratology with the tools of hermeneutics and deconstruction, this book argues that Jean Rhys’s work can be subsumed under a poetics of cultural identity and hybridity. It also demonstrates the validity of the concept of hybridization as the expression of identity formation; the cultural boundaries variability; the opposition self-otherness, authenticity-fiction, trans-textuality; and the relevance of an integrated approach to multiple cultural identities as an encountering and negotiation space between writer, reader and work. The complexity of ontological and epistemological representation involves an interdisciplinary approach that blends a literary interpretive approach to social, anthropological, cultural and historical perspectives. The book concludes that in the author’s fictional universe, cultural identity is represented as a general human experience that transcends the specific conditionalities of geographical contexts, history and culture. The construction of identity by Jean Rhys is represented by the dichotomy of marginal identity and the identification with a human ideal designed either by the hegemonic discourse or metropolitan culture or by the dominant ideology. The identification with a pattern of cultural authenticity, of racial, ethnic, or national purism is presented as a purely destructive cultural projection, leading to the creation of a static universe in opposition to the diversity of human feelings and aspirations. Jean Rhys’s fictional discourse lies between “the anxiety of authorship” and “the anxiety of influence” and shows the postcolonial era of uprooting and migration in which the national ownership diluted the image of a “home” ambiguous located at the boundary between a myth of origins and a myth of becoming. The relationship between the individual and socio-cultural space is thus shaped in a dual hybrid position.

Cultural Studies, Colonial and Postcolonial Literature, Caribbean Diaspora

Author / Editor information

Cristina-Georgiana Voicu, Romanian Academy, Iaşi Branch, Romania

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	1
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	7
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	8
Foreword Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	9
Preface Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	13
1 Identity in the Postcolonial Paradigm: Key Concepts Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	15
Retracted: 2 Jean Rhys’ Exoticism and the Colonial Imperialism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	43
3 Constructing Cultural Identity in Jean Rhys’ Fiction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
4 Jean Rhys and Intertextuality Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	75
5 Narrative Discourse in Jean Rhys’ Fiction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	86
6 Final Conclusions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	117
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	128
List of Figures Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	136
List of Tables Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	137
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	138

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter Open Poland
Audience: Readership: academics, psychologists, anthropologists, students interested in cultural hybridity, identity and alterity.
Pages
- Main content: 140
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 11
- Tables: 2
Keywords: Hybridity; Cultural identity; Caribbean Diaspora; Jean Rhys’s writings; Postcolonial literature

eBook

Published: July 24, 2014
ISBN: 9788376560687

Hardcover

Published: July 24, 2014
ISBN: 9788376560670