Judith Roof

Lesbianism in literature has been dealt with rather indirectly in the past. Editors have led readers to the "artistry" of a work containing lesbianism, emphasizing instead the literary history and historical context of the work rather than the representations of lesbianism. The editor for Colette's The Pure and the Impure, for instance, affirms that Colette has a knowledge of a "strange sisterhood," but assures readers she has never strayed from the "normal." In the groundbreaking A Lure of Knowledge, Judith Roof demonstrates that representations of lesbian sexuality occupy specific locations or positions in the arguments, subject matter, and rhetoric of Western European and American literary criticism. She examines the political context of representations: how lesbian sexuality is used as a signifier an why it appears when and where it does. Roof argues that attempts to depict or explain lesbian sexuality spur anxieties about knowledge and identity. In reaction to and denial of these anxieties, lesbian sexuality is represented in film, literature, theory, and criticism as foreplay, as simulated heterosexuality, as erotic excess, as joking inauthenticity, as artful compromise, or as masculine mask in a specific repertoire of neutralization and evasion. Challenging the heterosexism of film theory and feminist theory, this book analyzes the rhetorical use of lesbian sexuality. Roof explores a range of discourses, from the woks of such authors as Anais Nin, Olga Broumas, Julia Kristeva, Jane Rule, Luce Iriguray, and Sigmund Freud, to films such as Emmanuelle, Desert Hearts, Entre Nous, and I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, to professional tennis.

Lesbian Sexuality and Theory

A Lure of Knowledge

An intelligent, relevant, and lively new introduction to fiction builds on the success of its parent text, Understanding Literature. With accessible discussions of historical and cultural contexts and critical approaches, biographical information, and a stimulating table of contents, Understanding Fiction offers instructors and students an innovative option in anthologies. Accompanied by the Understanding Literature CD-ROM and Web Site, Understanding Fiction enriches the reading experience, enhances critical thinking, and promotes mastery in writing about fiction. Well-balanced selections juxtapose canonical authors with new voices not often anthologized and focus particular attention on ethnically diverse writers. Complete coverage of formal elements ensures that students understand such basics as character analysis, setting, point of view, plot, and narration. Extensive writing guidance teaches students how to write critically about literature in general and about fiction in particular, and includes instruction on writing a research paper. Unique, integrated, and accessible treatment of critical approaches enriches the course with more complex tools of literary study to help students develop insights and explore meaning in literature. A wealth of visual texts—including a color insert—enriches the study of literature with related photographs and works of art and provides lively new contexts in which students can view authors, artistic movements, and cultural developments. Chapter 17, "Fiction Across Media: Film," compares how stories are constructed in print and in film and includes a case study analysis of the print and film versions of Julio Cortazar's "Blow Up." Unique Chapter 18, "The Limits of Fiction: Autobiography" discusses how autobiography's combination of fact, memory, and opinion can fall between fiction and nonfiction writing. The chapter highlights such authors as Mark Twain, Jean Rhys, Carl Van Vechten, Chester Himes, Nicole Brossard, and W.S. Penn Chapter 19, "Writing Communities: The Beats," adapted from "The Beats" inter-genre chapter in the parent text, retains a short story by William S. Burroughs and adds selections from Diane di Prima and Jack Kerouac.

Understanding Fiction

Tone is often decisive in whether we love or dislike a story, novel, or even critical essay. Yet literary critics rarely treat tone as a necessary or important element of literary style or critique. There are surprisingly few analyses of what tone is, how texts produce tone, or the ways tone--as an essential element of narration--contributes to character, story, mood, and voice. Tone's 24 micro-chapters offer a playful, eclectic, and fast-paced guide into the creation of tone in a variety of modern and contemporary works of literature by such varied writers as Hemingway, Woolf, and Sedaris, as well as in criticism, advertising, and machine-authored texts. Judith Roof shows how tone is a crucial element in all writing, as it produces the illusion of a telling voice; creates a sense of character, personality, and attitude; inflects events recounted; anticipates certain directions and possibilities; and creates an ambiance that simultaneously produces, enables, and shapes narratives and characters. Tone gives us a lively and original way to rethink the practice of literary criticism.

Writing and the Sound of Feeling

Tone

Katherine H. Burkman

Professor Judith Roof

This study is divided into four sections, whose general topics trace various manifestations of misogyny in nineteenthand twentieth-century drama. Recent attempts to dismantle and expose relations between gender and spectacle receive attention in a volume that suggests exciting possibilities for a revision of theater.

The Web of Misogyny in Modern Drama

Staging the Rage

Inviting us to "wallow in the middle," Judith Roof offers a fresh, inventive look at female comic secondary characters who, though never on center stage, play an indispensable role in enriching and complicating the course of the narrative. Paying attention to these characters shows that narrative is not always as straight as it might seem. Focusing on such superb comic seconds as Eve Arden, Thelma Ritter, Rosalind Russell, and Whoopi Goldberg, Roof explores what is queer about the middle--in the sense of eccentric and in terms of desire--and how that queerness functions as a part of and an antidote to narrative. Shrewd, pragmatic, self-denying, perceptive, outspoken, and witty, these female characters are able to cross the bounds of social groupings, gender expectations, and propriety, presenting possibilities that threaten the "fitting ends" of narrative closure: norms such as heterosexuality, production, reproduction, knowledge, and victory. Roof characterizes female seconds as modern-day versions of the Shakespearean fool, able to speak the truth without being punished for it. Discussing films ranging from Mildred Pierce, Auntie Mame, and Rear Window to Stage Door, Sister Act, and The Associate, she shows how Hollywood's recasting of the wise servant figure as female, unattached, and lower class reflects more general cultural anxieties about the role of women, gender confusion, race, and class distinctions. She also tracks changes in the form and function of the minor and middle from the stylized, hierarchical economy of classical Hollywood film to the expanded, serial variety fitted to 1990s commodity culture. A meticulous, playful rereading of Hollywood classics from the margins, All about Thelma and Eve registers both delight in these female characters and discernment of their integral role in unseating narrative and other norms.

Sidekicks and Third Wheels

All about Thelma and Eve

Ranging through films, television, lesbian novels, and narrative theory from Victor/Victoria to Star Trek: The Next Generation, from Barnes's Nightwood to Barthes's The Pleasure of the Text, Judith Roof charts how ideas of narrative and sexuality inform, determine, and reproduce one another. She identifies the paradigmatic lesbian story, its unvarying repetition, and how it might be recast.

Judith Roof

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