The Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

Edited by Janet Beer
Cambridge University Press, 9/18/2008
EAN 9780521883443, ISBN10: 052188344X

Hardcover, 200 pages, 23.5 x 15.7 x 1.8 cm
Language: English

Although she enjoyed only modest success during her lifetime, Kate Chopin is now recognised as a unique voice in American literature. Her seminal novel, The Awakening, published in 1899, explored new and startling territory, and stunned readers with its frank depiction of the limits of marriage and motherhood. Chopin's aesthetic tastes and cultural influences were drawn from both the European and American traditions, and her manipulation of her 'foreignness' contributed to the composition of a complex voice that was strikingly different to that of her contemporaries. The essays in this Companion treat a wide range of Chopin's stories and novels, drawing her relationship with other writers, genres and literary developments, and pay close attention to the transatlantic dimension of her work. The result is a collection that brings a fresh perspective to Chopin's writing, one that will appeal to researchers and students of American, nineteenth-century, and feminist literature.

Chronology
Introduction Janet Beer
1. What we do and don't know about Kate Chopin's life Emily Toth
2. At Fault
a reappraisal of Kate Chopin's other novel Donna Campbell
3. Kate Chopin and the subject of childhood Pamela Knights
4. 'Race' and ethnicity in Kate Chopin's fiction Susan Castillo
5. Kate Chopin on fashion in a Darwinian world Katherine Joslin
6. The Awakening and New Woman fiction Ann Heilmann
7. Reading Kate Chopin through contemporary French feminist theory Michael Worton
8. The Awakening as literary innovation
Chopin, Maupassant and the evolution of genre Elizabeth Nolan
9. Kate Chopin, choice and modernism Avril Horner
10. Kate Chopin and post-colonial New Orleans Helen Taylor
11. The Awakening
the first hundred years Bernard Koloski
Guide to further reading
Index.

'This is a rich and comprehensive volume. The ten essays include helpful overviews, like those of veteran Chopin scholars Bernard Koloski and Emily Toth and Janet Beer's lively prologue. While these essays track mostly familiar territory, they also provide nuanced critical introductions to the many new readers who continue to be charmed by Chopin's fictions. But these essays also open new terrain in Chopin studies ... good stories, literary craft, and social consciousness - ought to guarantee Kate Chopin at least another century or two of readers and critics. And Janet Beer's fine collection of essays indicates just how interesting the reading will continue to be.' American Studies