Literary identification: from Charlotte Brontë to Tsitsi Dangaremgba

Description

"This book seeks to account for the persistence of a particular genre of realist fiction, the novel of formation, from nineteenth-century English through contemporary Anglophone literature. Through readings of novels by nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century women writers, as well as of memoirs, essays, and interviews that record reading experiences, I argue that this genre reproduces itself through the elaboration of bonds between and among readers, characters, and authors that I call, collectively, “literary identification.” These connections begin but do not end with a reader’s recognition of aspects of her- or himself in a fictional character. Forms of literary identification may also extend beyond the boundaries of the text to create relationships between readers and authors. Particular literary identifications may be limited by historical and cultural change or difference, but themes and rhetorical structures that foster literary identification continue to undergird the novel of formation in new and evolving contexts."