The Collusion of Feminist and Postmodernist Impulses in E.L. Doctorow’s "Ragtime"
| Contribuinte(s) |
Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) (project FFI2012-32719) Aragonese Regional Government (code H05) |
|---|---|
| Data(s) |
17/12/2015
|
| Resumo |
Many critics of Doctorow have classified him as a postmodernist writer, acknowledging that a wide number of thematic and stylistic features of his early fiction emanate from the postmodern context in which he took his first steps as a writer. Yet, these novels have an eminently social and ethical scope that may be best perceived in their intellectual engagement and support of feminist concerns. This is certainly the case of Doctorow’s fourth and most successful novel, Ragtime. The purpose of this paper will be two-fold. I will explore Ragtime’s indebtedness to postmodern aesthetics and themes, but also its feminist elements. Thus, on the one hand, I will focus on issues of uncertainty, indeterminacy of meaning, plurality and decentering of subjectivity; on the other hand, I will examine the novel’s attitude towards gender oppression, violence and objectification, its denunciation of hegemonic gender configurations and its voicing of certain feminist demands. This analysis will lead to an examination of the problematic collusion of the mostly white, male, patriarchal aesthetics of postmodernism and feminist politics in the novel. I will attempt to establish how these two traditionally conflicting modes coexist and interact in Ragtime. |
| Formato |
application/pdf |
| Identificador |
http://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/CJES/article/view/48592 10.5209/rev_CJES.2015.v23.48592 |
| Publicador |
Ediciones Complutense |
| Relação |
http://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/CJES/article/view/48592/47883 /*ref*/Barth, John (1984). The Literature of Exhaustion. The Friday Book: Essays and Other Non-Fiction. New York: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 62-76. /*ref*/Baudrillard, Jean. 1988. Simulation and Simulacra. In Poster, Mark, ed., 166-184. /*ref*/Bevilacqua, Winifred (1990). Narration and History in E.L. Doctorow’s Welcome to Hard Times, The Book of Daniel and Ragtime. American Studies in Scandinavia 22: 94-106. /*ref*/Bevilacqua, Winifred (1999). An Interview with E.L. Doctorow. In Morris, Christopher, ed., ed., 129-143. /*ref*/Butler, Judith and Joan W. Scott, eds. (1992). Feminists Theorize the Political. New York: Routledge. /*ref*/Connel, Raewyn (2005). Masculinities. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. /*ref*/Conier Michael, Magali (1996). Feminism and the Postmodern Impulse: Post World War II Fiction. Albany: State University of New York Press. /*ref*/Derrida, Jacques (1967, 1997). Of Grammatology. Corrected Edition. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. /*ref*/Doctorow, Edgar L. (1960, 2007). Welcome to Hard Times. New York: Random House. /*ref*/Doctorow, Edgar L. (1971, 2006). The Book of Daniel. London: Penguin Modern Classics. /*ref*/Doctorow, Edgar L. (1974, 2006). Ragtime. London: Penguin Modern Classics. /*ref*/Doctorow, Edgar L. (1977, 1993) False Documents. Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution: Selected Essays 1977–1992. New York: Random House. /*ref*/Farca, Paula A (2013). E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime in the Context of Historiographic Metafiction―A Study. IRWLE 9.1: 1-10. /*ref*/Felski, Rita (1989). Beyond Feminist Aesthetics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. /*ref*/Foley, Barbara (1983). From U.S.A to Ragtime: Notes on the Forms of Historical Consciousness in Modern Fiction. In Trenner, Richard, ed., 158-178. /*ref*/Foucault, Michel (1970, 2002). The Order of Things: An Archeology of Human Sciences. London and New York: Routledge. /*ref*/Friedl, Herwig and Dieter Schulz (1999). A Multiplicity of Witnesses: E.L. Doctorow at Heidelberg. In Morris, Christopher, ed., 112-128. /*ref*/Harris, Stephen (2001). Myths of Individualism in E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime. Australasian Journal of American Studies 20.2: 47-61. /*ref*/Harter, Carol C. and James R. Thompson (1990). E. L. Doctorow. Boston: Twayne. /*ref*/Hekman, Susan J. (1992). Gender and Knowledge: Elements of a Postmodern Feminism. Boston: Northeastern University Press. /*ref*/Hite, Molly (1989). The Other Side of the Story: Structures and Strategies of Contemporary Feminist Narrative. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. /*ref*/Hutcheon, Linda (1988). A Poetics of Postmodernism. London and New York: Routledge. /*ref*/Jameson, Fredric (1991). Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press. /*ref*/Jones, Phyllis (1979). Ragtime: Feminist, Socialist and Black Perspectives on the Self-Made Man. Journal of American Culture 2.1: 17-28. /*ref*/Kurth-Voigt, Lieselotte E. (1977). Kleistian Overtones in E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime. Monatshefte 69.4: 404-14. /*ref*/Levine, Paul (1985). E.L. Doctorow: An Introduction. New York: Methuen. /*ref*/Luckacs, John. (1975) Doctorowurlitzer or History in Ragtime. Salmagundi 31/32 10th Anniversary: 285-95. /*ref*/Lyotard, Jean-Francois (1979, 1984). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester: Manchester University Press. /*ref*/Moraru, Christian (1997). The Reincarnated Plot: E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime, Heinrich von Kleist’s “Michael Kohlhass,” and the Spectacle of Modernity. The Comparatist 21: 92-116. /*ref*/Morris, Christopher, ed. (1999). Conversations with E. L. Doctorow. Jackson: Mississippi University Press. /*ref*/Orbán, Katalin (2003). Swallowed Futures, Indigestible Pasts: Post-apocalyptic Narratives of Rights in Kleist and Doctorow. Comparative American Studies 1.3: 327-350. /*ref*/Ostendorf, Berndt (1991). The Musical World of Doctorow’s Ragtime. American Quarterly 43.4: 579-601. /*ref*/Parks, John G. (1991). E. L. Doctorow. New York: Continuum. /*ref*/Piehl, Kathy (1980). E. L. Doctorow and Random House: The Ragtime Rhythm of Cash. Journal of Popular Culture 13.3: 404–11. /*ref*/Poster, Mark, ed. (1988). Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings. Stanford: Stanford University Press. /*ref*/Roberts, Brian (2004). Blackface Minstrelsy and Jewish Identity: Fleshing out Ragtime as the Central Metaphor in E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime. Critique 45.3: 247-259. /*ref*/Saltzman, Arthur (1983). The Stylistic Energy of E.L. Doctorow. In Trenner, Richard, ed., 73-108. /*ref*/Schllinger, Liesl (1999). A Talk with E.L. Doctorow. In Morris, Christopher, ed., 107-111. /*ref*/Shulman, Alix Kates, ed. (1998). Introduction. Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader. New York: Humanity Books. /*ref*/Singer, Linda (1992). Feminism and Postmodernism. In Butler, Judith and Joan W. Scott, eds. eds., 464-75. /*ref*/Tokarczyk, Michelle M. (2000). E. L. Doctorow’s Skeptical Commitment. New York: Peter Lang. /*ref*/Trenner, Richard, ed. (1983). E. L. Doctorow: Essays & Conversations. Princeton, New Jersey: Ontario Review. /*ref*/Waugh, Patricia (1984). Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction. London and New York: Routledge. /*ref*/Waugh, Patricia (2012). Feminine Fictions: Revisiting the Postmodern. London and New York: Routledge. /*ref*/Williams, John (1996). Fiction as False Document: The Reception of E. L. Doctorow in the Postmodern Age. Columbia: Camden House. http://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/CJES/article/downloadSuppFile/48592/2239 |
| Direitos |
LICENCE OF USE: The full text articles included on the Scientific Journals of the Complutense website are open access and the property of their authors and/or publishers. Therefore, any reproduction, distribution, public communication and/or total or partial transformation requires their express and written consent. Links to the full text of the articles on the Scientific Journals of the Complutense website should be to the official URL of the Complutense University of Madrid. |
| Fonte |
Complutense Journal of English Studies; Vol 23 (2015); 97-114 Complutense Journal of English Studies; Vol 23 (2015); 97-114 |
| Palavras-Chave | #Humanities; English Studies #Feminist literary criticism; Postmodernism; E.L. Doctorow; Ragtime; gender change #Feminist literary criticism |
| Tipo |
info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion |
