Jeanette Winterson

This is the first full-length study of Jeanette Winterson's work as a whole, containing in-depth analyses of her nine novels and cross-references to her minor fiction and non-fiction works. The study establishes the formal, thematic and ideological characteristics of the novels and situates the writer within the general panorama of contemporary British fiction. Earlier critics often approached Winterson either as a key lesbian novelist, or as a heavily experimental and 'arty' writer, and saw her work as unnecessarily difficult or meaningless. In contrast, this book provides a comprehensive, 'vertical' analysis of the novels. It combines the study of formal issues - such as narrative structure, point of view, perspective, and the handling of narrative and story time - with the thematic analysis of character types, recurrent topoi and intertextual and generic allusions. Onega employs various analytical perspectives including narratology, lesbian and feminist theory (especially Cixous and Kristeva), Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, Jungian archetypal criticism, Tarot, Hermetic and Kabalistic symbolism, myth criticism and Newtonian and post-Newtonian physics. Novels that initially read superficially, are revealed as complex linguistic artefacts with a convoluted structure and clogged with intertextual echoes of earlier writers and works. Onega's conclusions show the inseparability of form and meaning and place Winterson within the trend of postmodernist British writers with a visionary outlook on art, such as Maureen Duffy, Marina Warner or Peter Ackroyd. Book jacket.

Susana Onega is Professor of English Philology (English Literature) at the University of Zaragoza, Spain.