The critical response to Anais Nin

Author(s)

• Jason, Philip K.

Bibliographic Information

The critical response to Anais Nin

edited by Philip K. Jason

（Critical responses in arts and letters, no. 23）

Greenwood Press, 1996

Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [253]-268) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Best known for her diary, Anais Nin was also the author of several novels, short fiction, and a book on D.H. Lawrence. As a woman who made a career of her aesthetic femininity, her works helped shape the future of gender studies and feminist literary criticism. Her writings have challenged numerous critics, while her life has been equally fascinating. The selections in this book represent the critical response to her works, from her first efforts in the 1930s to the posthumous publication of unexpurgated diary volumes beginning in 1986, including the views of major biographers and contemporary critics. Born in France in 1903, Anais Nin spent her life in New York, Paris, and Los Angeles, where she died in 1977. Like the chaotic passages of her life, her writings have not easily fallen into neat categories. Though she published several novels, short fiction, and erotica, she is best known for her enormous and captivating diary, which sometimes commanded more attention in unpublished form than her published fiction did. As a woman writer who made a career of her aesthetic femininity, her works helped shape the future of gender studies and feminist literary criticism. The selections in this volume trace the critical response to Nin's works from the 1930s to the present. Though Nin died nearly 20 years ago, the posthumous publication of several of her works, including three unexpurgated diary volumes, has prompted renewed critical attention, including two major biographical studies. Because biographical concerns dominate critical studies, this book contains not only sections on her work in general, her short fiction, and her novels, but also special sections on her monumental diary and on her public and private selves. Within each section, critical articles and reviews are reprinted chronologically, so that the reader may trace the response to Nin over time. A bibliography lists works for further consultation, and an introductory essay explores the direction of critical attention to her writings.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword by Cameron Northouse Chronology Introduction by Philip K. Jason General Assessments Anais Nin by Frank Baldanza Anais Nin and the Discovery of Inner Space by Oliver Evans Anais Nin and the Feminine Quest for Consciousness: The Quelling of the Devouring Mother and the Ascension of the Sophia by Stephanie A. Gauper Anais Nin: A Critical Evaluation by Estelle C. Jelinek The Music of the Womb: Anais Nin's 'Feminine Writing' by Sharon Spencer Nin's Shorter Fiction Passion in Parenthesis by Stuart Gilbert Refinements on a Journal by Paul Rosenfeld 'Men…Have No Tenderness': Anais Nin's Winter of Artifice by William Carlos Williams Review of Under a Glass Bell by Edmund Wilson Review of Under a Glass Bell by Isaac Rosenfeld Review of Under a Glass Bell by Violet Lang The Textual Evolution of the First Section of 'Houseboat' by Benjamin Franklin V Discourse and Intercourse, Design and Desire in the Erotica of Anais Nin by Smaro Kamboureli Nin's Novels Surrealist Soap Opera by Herbert Lyons Freudian Noah's Ark by René Fülop-Miller Temperament vs. Conscience by Maxwell Geismar Humanity Is the Principle by Malcolm Mudrick Nin: The Topic of Paris by James Korges Sexuality and the Opposite Sex: Variations on a Theme by Théophile Gautier and Anais Nin by Paul Brians Lillian Beye's Labyrinth: A Freudian Interpretation of Cities of the Interior by Suzette A. Henke Nin's Diary Un Etre Etoilique by Henry Miller The Charmed Circle of Anais Nin by Karl Shapiro Free Women by Patricia Meyer Spacks "Excuse Me, It Was All a Dream": The Diary of Anais Nin, 1944-1947 by Evelyn J. Hinz The Diaries of Anais Nin by Lynn Luria-Sukenick Anais Nin in the Diary: The Creation and Development of a Persona by Duane Schneider Truth and Artistry in The Diary of Anais Nin by Joan B. McLaughlin Dropping Another Veil: Anais Nin's Henry and June by Philip K. Jason A Story Never Told Before: Reading the New, Unexpurgated Diaries of Anais Nin by Erica Jong Nin Herself Looking Again at Anais Nin by Maxine Molyneux and Julia Casterton A Mirror of Her Own: Anais Nin's Autobiographical Performances by Elyse Lamm Pineau Bibliography Index

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

• NCID: BA28883999
• ISBN:
  • 031329626X
• LCCN: 96006344
• Country Code: us
• Title Language Code: eng
• Text Language Code: eng
• Place of Publication: Westport, Conn.
• Pages/Volumes: xviii, 271 p.
• Size: 24 cm
• Classification:
  • LCC : PS3527.I865
  • DC20 : 818/.5209
• Subject Headings:
  • LCSH : Nin, Anaïs, 1903-1977 -- Criticism and interpretation
  • LCSH : Women and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• Parent Bibliography ID:
  • BA17059012