Overview

In Contemporary Feminist Fiction and a Case for Expanding Rhetorical Narratology, Katherine J. Weese explores intersections among rhetorical, unnatural, and feminist narrative theories and post-postmodern theory to argue that an expanded rhetorical poetics offers the most comprehensive model for illuminating recent works that employ unnatural devices for feminist purposes. This pluralist narratological framework is a vital counterpoint to theorists' tendency to read twentieth- and twenty-first-century novels through a post-postmodernist or metamodernist lens that overlooks unnatural, feminist, and rhetorical narrative theories. Examining Ali Smith's The Accidental and Hotel World, Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, Toni Morrison's Beloved, Kate Atkinson's A God in Ruins and Life After Life, and Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being, Weese demonstrates how various narratological theories inform rather than compete with one another. Through an expanded rhetorical poetics, including a refined version of James Phelan's MTS (mimetic, thematic, synthetic) model, she reframes post-postmodern theorists' concerns with communicative function through a narratological lens to make the case that exploring the rhetorical function of unnatural devices challenges and extends the claims of narrow metamodern readings.

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9780814215999

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Reviews

""With enormous skill, Weese shows how an antimimetic narrative can address issues of power and injustice in the real world. She succeeds at a bold and original integration of feminist, rhetorical, and unnatural theories, mapping how they--explicitly or imp

Author Information

Katherine J. Weese is Venable Professor of English at Hampden-Sydney College. Her research has appeared in Storyworlds, Journal of Narrative Theory, Modern Fiction Studies, Narrative, and Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts.

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