Alison Holland

Simone de Beauvoir was among the 20th century's most influential thinkers. She was a philosopher at the forefront of existentialism, a pioneering thinker on women and feminism in ""The Second Sex"", the writer of prize-winning fiction, an autobiographical writer and a committed political activist. Introducing her life and work in a straightforward, jargon-free way, this guide offers readings of her fiction, explores the many facets of her thought and assesses her contribution to the intellectual debate.

Simone de Beauvoir - A Beginner's Guide

Barbara Brookes

In recent years ‘race’ has fallen out of historiographical fashion, being eclipsed by seemingly more benign terms such as ‘culture,’ ‘ethnicity’ and ‘difference.’ This timely and highly readable collection of essays re-energises the debate by carefully focusing our attention on local articulations of race and their intersections with colonialism and its aftermath. In Rethinking the Racial Moment: Essays on the Colonial Encounter Alison Holland and Barbara Brookes have produced a collection of studies that shift our historical understanding of colonialism in significant new directions. Their generous and exciting brief will ensure that the book has immediate appeal for multiple readers engaged in critical theory, as well as those more specifically involved in Australian and New Zealand history. Collectively, they offer new and invigorating approaches to understanding colonialism and cultural encounters in history via the interpretive (not merely temporal) frame of ‘the moment.’

Essays on the Colonial Encounter

Rethinking the Racial Moment

Alison Holland’s innovative book fills a gap in Beauvoir studies by focusing on the writer’s frequently neglected novels and short stories, L’Invitée, Les Mandarins, Les Belles Images, and La Femme rompue. In illuminating the density and rich complexity of Beauvoir’s style, Holland challenges the often accepted view that Beauvoir’s writing is flat, detached, and controlled, revealing, rather, that her prose is frequently disrupted and inflected by forceful emotion. Holland shows that excess and transgression are intrinsic qualities of the texts, and argues that Beauvoir’s textual strategies duplicate madness in her fiction. Holland’s reading of Beauvoir’s fiction demonstrates the extent to which Beauvoir’s fiction undermines an ideologically patriarchal position on language. Her study is important not only for its re-evaluation of Beauvoir as a fiction writer but for its contribution to the wider debate on madness and literature.

The Discourse of Madness

Excess and Transgression in Simone de Beauvoir's Fiction

Louise Renée

This collection of essays brings an approach to Beauvoir studies and makes an important contribution to Beauvoir's writing practice in her novels and short stories, and analysis the extent to which the meaning of her texts cannot be separated from the way they are written.

Women and Language

Simone de Beauvoir's Fiction

Alison Holland's study focuses on the writer's frequently neglected novels and short stories, including L'Invitée, Les Mandarins, Les Belles Images, and La Femme rompue. Illuminating the density and rich complexity of Beauvoir's style, Holland demonstrates the extent to which Beauvoir's fiction undermines an ideologically patriarchal position on language. Her re-evaluation of Beauvoir as a fiction writer makes an important contribution to the wider debate on madness and literature.

Alison Holland

Books

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