'Designing its own shadow' – reading Ann Quin

Williams-Korteling, Nonia (2013) 'Designing its own shadow' – reading Ann Quin. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

In response, the thesis provides extended and in depth readings of
Quin’s books, short pieces, manuscripts and letters to demonstrate how these
by turns overtly experimental, allusive, chaotic and frustrating texts are also
carefully crafted, replete with clues and motifs, and in conversation with their
time and place. Aware of the need to somewhat ‘introduce’ the writer, my
readings draw out and consider locations of resonance and discord between
her writing, life and cultural contexts. In addition, engagement with specific
sources – from George Eliot to Beckett, Woolf to Sartre, Jane Harrison to
William Burroughs, Dostoevsky to Alain Renais – reveals how Quin’s writing
responds to, interrogates, encompasses and transcends these. Where relevant,
the thesis is also informed and extended by a more theoretical approach.
Indeed, my distinctive methodological approach reveals the points at which life,
writing, historical context and theory are productively interwoven. Throughout, I
argue that while the writing seems anachronistic by being immersed in earlier
literature, it is precisely this immersion which energises its resistant rebellion to
and ironic interrogation of the dominant ideologies and literary practices of its
time. In this, Quin’s is writing both of the shadows and designing its own.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature and Creative Writing (former - to 2011)
Depositing User:	Users 2593 not found.
Date Deposited:	09 Jul 2013 13:29
Last Modified:	24 Nov 2015 12:05
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/42960
DOI:

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