Reading Coetzee's Women

This is the first book to focus entirely on the under-researched but crucial topic of women in the work of J. M. Coetzee, generally regarded as one of the world's most significant living writers. The fourteen essays in this collection raise the central issue of how Coetzee's texts address the 'woman question'. There is a focus on Coetzee's representation of women, engagement with women writers and the ethics of what has been termed his 'ventriloquism' of women's voices in his fiction and autobiographical writings, right up until his most recent novel, The Schooldays of Jesus. As such, this collection makes important links between the disciplines of literary and gender studies. It includes essays by well-known Coetzee scholars as well as by emerging scholars from around the world, providing fascinating and timely global insights into how his works are read from differing cultural and scholarly perspectives.

Auteur

Melinda Harvey is Lecturer in Literary Studies at Monash University, Australia. She is co-editor of Katherine Mansfield and Literary Influence (2015), has written numerous essays on J. M. Coetzee's writing, and is the current judge of the Miles Franklin Literary Award, Australia's most prestigious literary prize.

Sue Kossew is Chair of English and Literary Studies at Monash University, Australia. Her books include Pen and Power: A Post-Colonial Reading of J.M. Coetzee and André Brink (1996), Writing Woman, Writing Place: Australian and South African Fiction (2004) and Rethinking the Victim: Gender and Violence in Australian Women's Writing (2019). Edited volumes include Critical Essays on J.M. Coetzee (1998) and Strong Opinions: J.M. Coetzee and the Authority of Contemporary Fiction (2011).

Contenu

Chapter 1: J. M. Coetzee and the Woman Question.- Chapter 2: He and his Woman: Passing Performances and Coetzee's Dialogic Drag.- Chapter 3: Molly Bloom and Elizabeth Costello: Coetzee's Female Characters and the Limits of the Sympathetic Imagination.- Chapter 4: 'A New Footing': Re-Reading the Barbarian Girl in J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians.- Chapter 5: Art and the Female in Youth: Between Joyce and Beckett.- Chapter 6: 'Beauty does not own itself': Coetzee's Feminist Critique of Platonic and Kantian Aesthetics.- Chapter 7: J. M. Coetzee and the Women of the Canon.- Chapter 8: Robinsonaden in the Feminine? Coetzee's Foe and Muriel Spark's Robinson.- Chapter 9: The Fixation on the Womb and the Ambiguity of the Mother in Life & Times of Michael K.- Chapter 10: 'God knows whether there is a Dulcinea in this world or not': Idealised Passion and Undecidable Desire in J. M. Coetzee.- Chapter 11: Seeing where others see nothing: Coetzee's Magda, Cassandra in the Karoo.- Chapter 12: Reading Coetzee Expectantly: From Magda to Lucy.- Chapter 13: Women's Knowledge and Women's Frank Speech in J. M. Coetzee's Summertime.- Chapter 14: On beyond the representational binary: Coetzee (and the women) take wing.