9780679777533

In this innovative and wide-ranging book, Byatt and the psychoanalyst Ignes Sodre bring their different sensibilities to bear on six novels they have read and loved: Jane Austen'sMansfield Park, Bronte'sVillette, George Elliot'sDaniel Deronda, Willa Cather'sThe Professor's House, Iris Murdoch'sAn Unofficial Rose, and Toni Morrison'sBeloved. The results are nothing less than an education in the ways literature grips its readers and, at times, transforms their lives.Imagining Charactersis indispensable, a work of criticism that returns us to the books it discusses with renewed respect and wonder.

A.S. Byatt is the author of the novels Possession (winner of the Booker Prize in 1990), The Game, and the sequence The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, and Babel Tower. She has also written two novellas, published together as Angels and Insects, and four collections of shorter works, including The Matisse Stories and The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye. Educated at Cambridge, she was a senior lecturer in English at University College, London, before becoming a full-time writer in 1983. A distinguished critic as well as a novelist, she lives in London.

Acknowledgements

ix

(2)

Preface

xi

ONE Jane Austen: Mansfield Park

1

(42)

TWO Charlotte Bronte: Villette

43

(35)

THREE George Eliot: Daniel Deronda

78

(40)

FOUR Willa Cather: The Professor's House

118

(34)

FIVE Iris Murdoch: An Unofficial Rose

152

(40)

SIX Toni Morrison: Beloved

192

(38)

SEVEN Dreams and Fictions

230

(29)

Source Notes

259

(6)

Index

265

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Imagining Characters Six Conversations About Women Writers: Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eli ot, Willa Cather, Iris Murdoch, and Toni Morrison

Imagining Characters Six Conversations About Women Writers: Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eli ot, Willa Cather, Iris Murdoch, and Toni Morrison

0679777539

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials