Rumer Godden Revisited: 519 (Twayne's World Authors S.) - Hardcover

Rosenthal, Lynne M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805779302 ISBN 13: 9780805779301

Publisher: Twayne Publishers Inc.,U.S., 1996

Synopsis

Series Editors: Kinley E. Roby, Northeastern University; Herbert Sussman, Northeastern University; Joseph Bartolomeo, University of Massachusetts; George Economou, University of Oklahoma; Arthur F. Kinney, University of Massachusetts

Twaynes United States Authors, English Authors, and World Authors Series present concise critical introductions to great writers and their works.

Devoted to critical interpretation and discussion of an authors work, each study takes account of major literary trends and important scholarly contributions and provides new critical insights with an original point of view. An Authors Series volumeaddresses readers ranging from advanced high school students to university professors. The book suggests to the informed reader new ways of considering a writers work. A reader new to the work under examination will, after reading theAuthors Series, be compelled to turn to the originals, bringing to the reading a basic knowledge and fresh critical perspectives. Each volume features:

• A critical, interpretive study and explication of the authors works
• A brief biography of the author
• An accessible chronology outlining the life, work, and relevant historical background of the author
• Aids for further study -- complete notes and references, a selected annotated bibliography, and an index
• A readable style presented in a manageable length

About this title

About the Author

Lynne Rosenthal is associate professor of English at Mercy College (New York).

From the Back Cover

The Indian proverb that inspired the title of Rumer Godden's third (and, to date, final) memoir, published in 1989, likens people to houses with four rooms, each of which represents a primary aspect of the self: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. "Most of us", Godden writes, "tend to live in one room most of the time, but unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person". In her art as well as her life, Godden has placed a high value on personal striving for completion, that is, for the discovery of the real and mature self. Lynne Rosenthal, in this study of Godden's fiction for children and adults, shows how her dozens of works in both genres explore the "variety of experiences in which self-transformation occurs through an act of will". The focus of Rosenthal's study is the figure of the child, which Godden uses in her fiction "as a powerful mirroring image, reflecting many of society's most profound fears, struggles, and hopes for redemption". Godden returns again and again in her work to the theme of the conflicting needs of children and adults. Her contemplation of this theme - particularly as it relates to the female artist and mother - predates the feminist fiction writers and critics who emerged in the early 1970s. Sympathetic from personal experience to the needs of both conflicted parent and dependent child, Godden arrives at no easy resolution of the problem. She is thoroughly sensitive to the suffering caused in children by parental neglect, yet, surprisingly, she often shows the absence of a parent to be ultimately liberating, freeing a child to undertake the journey toward completion that Godden so values. In adultnovels such as An Episode of Sparrows, The Greengage Summer, and Pippa Passes, and even more consistently in such books for children as The Diddakoi, The Dolls' House, Mouse House, and Thursday's Children, the independent struggle for personal fulfillment is rewarded.

Edition details

• Publisher: Twayne Publishers Inc.,U.S.
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805779302
• ISBN 13: 9780805779301
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 150