"Why should I not live the art I love?" : the liberating power of art in Jeanette Winterson's literary work

Vol.49,No.1(2023)

Daniela Šmardová

https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2023-1-10

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/digilib.78905

PDF
Abstract
This article examines Jeanette Winterson's work to illustrate how art can hold a transformative and therapeutic potential. It presents the argument that by stimulating imagination and conveying a sense of contingency, art functions as a counterforce to several potentially harmful aspects of contemporary society, such as the uncritical belief in science and technological progress, excessive consumption, and blind pursuit of profit, most of which result from prevailing egocentric attitudes. To explore the potential of art to foster opposing values and encourage the transcendence of the ego, the article analyses novels of Jeanette Winterson, all of which portray imaginative worlds challenging conventional patterns of thought and foregrounding alternative ways of perception. The article examines both the role that Winterson ascribes to art by addressing the issue in her texts, and how she herself fulfils the potential of art in the work she produces.

Keywords:
Jeanette Winterson; art; imagination; contingency; love; therapy

Pages:
179–192
References

Andrievskikh, Natalia (2015) Consumption as Theme and Textual Strategy in Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson. Pacific Coast Philology 50 (1), 5–24.

Antosa, Silvia (2009) Journeying Through Space and Time towards the Sources of Artistic Inspiration: Jeanette Winterson's Art & Lies. In: Margaret J.-M. Sönmez and Mine Özyurt Kiliç (eds.) Winterson Narrating Time and Space. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 121–38.

Arendt, Hannah (2003) Responsibility and Judgment. New York: Schocken Books.

Bradway, Tyler (2015) Queer Exuberance: The Politics of Affect in Jeanette Winterson's Visceral Fiction. Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 48 (1), 183–200.

Burns, Christy L. (1996) Fantastic Language: Jeanette Winterson's Recovery of the Postmodern Word. Contemporary Literature 37 (2), 278–306.

Cokal, Susann (2004) Expression in a Diffuse Landscape: Contexts for Jeanette Winterson's Lyricism. Style 38 (1), 16–36.

Disch, Lisa Jane (1994) Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Philosophy. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

Doan, Laura (1994) Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Postmodern. In: Laura Doan (ed.) The Lesbian Postmodern. New York: Columbia University Press, 137–54.

French, Jana L. (1999) 'I'm Telling You Stories.... Trust Me': Gender, Desire, and Identity in Jeanette Winterson's Historical Fantasies. Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 10 (3), 231–52.

Hutchison, Emma (2010) Unsettling Stories: Jeanette Winterson and the Cultivation of Political Contingency. Global Society 24 (3), 351–68.

Kearney, Richard (2002) On Stories. London: Routledge.

Kostkowska, Justyna (2013) Ecocriticism and Women Writers: Environmentalist Poetics of Virginia Woolf, Jeanette Winterson, and Ali Smith. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Li, Tong (2017) Modernity and Postmodernity: The Characteristics of Postmodern Cultural Media. Frontiers of Philosophy in China 12 (2), 265–77.

McAvan, Emily (2019) Jeanette Winterson and Religion. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Morrison, Jago (2006) 'Who Cares About Gender at a Time Like This?' Love, Sex and the Problem of Jeanette Winterson. Journal of Gender Studies 15 (2), 169–80.

Murdoch, Iris (1986) The Sovereignty of Good. London: Routledge.

Murdoch, Iris (1993) Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. London: Penguin.

Murdoch, Iris (1999) Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature. New York: Penguin.

Nussbaum, Martha C. (1991) The Literary Imagination in Public Life. New Literary History 22 (4), 877–910.

Nussbaum, Martha C. (2008) Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Roessner, Jeffrey (2002) Writing a History of Difference: Jeanette Winterson's 'Sexing the Cherry' and Angela Carter's 'Wise Children. College Literature 29 (1), 102–22.

Vickroy, Laurie (2015) Reading Trauma Narratives: The Contemporary Novel and the Psychology of Oppression. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.

Wiel, Reina van der (2014) Literary Aesthetics of Trauma: Virginia Woolf and Jeanette Winterson. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Winterson, Jeanette (1988) The Passion. London: Penguin Books.

Winterson, Jeanette (1991) Sexing the Cherry. New York: Vintage Books.

Winterson, Jeanette (1995) Art & Lies: A Piece for Three Voices and a Bawd. New York: Random House, Inc.

Winterson, Jeanette (1997) Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery. New York: Vintage Books.

Winterson, Jeanette (1998) Gut Symmetries. London: Granta.

Winterson, Jeanette (2001) Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. London: Vintage Books.

Winterson, Jeanette (2007) The PowerBook. London: Vintage Books.

Winterson, Jeanette (2008) The Stone Gods. London: Penguin Books.

Winterson, Jeanette (2009) Weight. New York: Canongate.

Winterson, Jeanette (2011) Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? London: Grove Press.

Winterson, Jeanette (2016) Christmas Days: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days. New York: Grove Press.

Metrics

0

Crossref logo

0

107

Views

0

PDF views

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

PDF