Women Writers and National Identity: Bachmann, Duden, OEzdamar

Description

In Women Writers and National Identity, Stephanie Bird offers a detailed analysis of the twin themes of female identity and national identity in the works of three major twentieth-century German-language women writers. Bird argues for the importance of an understanding of ambiguity, tension and contradiction in the fictional narratives of Ingeborg Bachmann, Anne Duden and Emine OEzdamar. She aims to demonstrate how ambiguity is itself central to the development of an understanding of identity and that literary texts are uniquely able to point to the ethical importance of ambiguity through their stylistic complexity. Bird gives close readings of the three writers and draws on feminist theory and psychoanalysis to elucidate the complex nature of individual identity. This book will be of interest to literary and women's studies scholars as well as Germanists.

Stephanie Bird is Lecturer in German at University College London. She is the author of Recounting Historical Women (1998) and of articles in journals, including MLR, Austrian Studies and FMLS.

"Well written, well argued, and well researched, this book offers excellent analysis of selected novels and stories by three very different authors... This book serves a necessary function in suggesting fruitful directions for feminist scholarship." Choice