Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing

Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing
Author: Hélène Cixous
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 178
Release: 1993
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780231076593

Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing is a poetic, insightful, and ultimately moving exploration of 'the strange science of writing.' In a magnetic, irresistible narrative, Cixous reflects on the writing process and explores three distinct areas essential for 'great' writing: The School of the Dead--the notion that something or someone must die in order for good writing to be born; The School of Dreams--the crucial role dreams play in literary inspiration and output; and The School of Roots--the importance of depth in the 'nether realms' in all aspects of writing. Cixous's love of language and passion for the written word is evident on every page. Her emotive style draws heavily on the writers she most admires: the Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector, the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, the Austrian novelists Ingeborg Bachmann and Thomas Bernhard, Dostoyevsky and, most of all, Kafka.

Helene Cixous

Helene Cixous
Author: Susan Sellers
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2013-06-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 074566850X

This book is a clear and accessible introduction to the writings of Helene Cixous, novelist, dramatist and critic, whose work has had a major impact on feminist theory and practice. Susan Sellers, a major scholar on Cixous, provides a lucid account of Cixous's theoretical position, and in particular her distinctive theory of an 'écriture féminine'. She discusses the development of Cixous's literary oeuvre in the context of this theory, and analyses a selection of the works in detail to illustrate the different stages in Cixous's writing career. Focusing on the key novels and plays, Sellers explores a range of issues and themes central to her work; the correlation between the death of Cixous's own father and her 'coming-into-being' as a writer; the psychological process of separation and individuation and the creation of a female authorial self; the discovery of the other and the dramatization of love; the delineation/depiction of an alternative form of relationship between self and other which would have a significance in a wider sphere than that of the merely personal. This much-needed book will be welcomed by students in literature and literary theory, feminism and women's studies, English and French studies and philosophy.

Stigmata

Stigmata
Author: Hélène Cixous
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2002-01-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1134680996

Hèléne Cixous -- author, playwright and French feminist theorist -- is a key figure in twentieth-century literary theory. Stigmata brings together her most recent essays for the first time. Acclaimed for her intricate and challenging writing style, Cixous presents a collection of texts that get away -- escaping the reader, the writers, the book. Cixous's writing pursues authors such as Stendhal, Joyce, Derrida, and Rembrandt, da Vinci, Picasso -- works that share an elusive movement in spite of striking differences. Along the way these essays explore a broad range of poetico-philosophical questions that have become characteristic of Cixous' work: * love's labours lost and found * feminine hours * autobiographies of writing * the prehistory of the work of art Stigmata goes beyond theory, becoming an extraordinary writer's testimony to our lives and times.

Love Itself

Love Itself
Author: Hélène Cixous
Publisher: Polity
Total Pages: 153
Release: 2008-08-11
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0745639887

Love’s memories, love recalling itself in letters lost and found over an interval of forty years: Cixous’s writer-narrator advances here far into a labyrinth of passions long ago delivered and yet still arriving through the mail, through letters and literature, in other words, the poetry of the post. As for the lovers’ returning scenes, they have their addresses in Paris (rue Olivier de Serres, Avenue de Choisy, street names that endlessly feed love’s unconscious language) and in New York, but also in a lost oasis of the Egyptian desert during the Napoleonic wars, in Athens and along the shores of a great lake centuries ago in the country of myth. The lovers are poets or soldiers, philosophers or students madly in love with poetry and poets. They are as well mermaids or panthers. Panthers? Yes, for it is the passion of the animal that drives all these lovers to bare themselves, and sometimes their claws, before the beloved. Misunderstandings are often, even inevitably the result. Seconded and witnessed by her passionate, truth-telling cats, Cixous’s narrator-writer returns unerringly to moments of errancy inflicted on address and language, those errors and faults when love, perhaps, is listening only to itself, without subject or object, lover or beloved, just love itself, l’amour même, l’amour m’aime, love loving me, in the letter box of memory.

The Book of Promethea

The Book of Promethea
Author: Häl_ne Cixous
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 1991-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780803263437

In writing Le Livre de Promethea Häl_ne Cixous set for herself the task of bridging the immeasurable distance between love and language. She describes a love between twoøwomen in its totality, experienced as both a physical presence and a sense of infinity. The result is a stunning example of Pecriture feminine that won kudos when published in France in 1983. Its translation into English by Betsy Wing will extend the influence of a writer already famous for her novels and contributions to feminist theory. In her introduction Betsy Wing notes the contemporary emphasis on "fictions of presence." Cixous, in The Book of Promethea, works to "repair the separation between fiction and presence, trying to chronicle a very-present love without destroying it in the writing."

The Newly Born Woman

The Newly Born Woman
Author: Hélène Cixous
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 196
Release: 1986
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780816614660

Published in France as La jeune nee in 1975, and now translated for the first time into English, The Newly Born Woman seeks to uncover the veiled structures of language and society that have situated women in the position called 'woman's place.'

The Hélène Cixous Reader

The Hélène Cixous Reader
Author: Susan Sellers
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2003-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1134944764

This key collection of feminist writing includes essays, works of fiction, lectures and drama, all arranged chronologically. Spanning twenty years, it demonstrates the development of one of the great creative minds of the 20ieth century.

Hélène Cixous, Rootprints

Hélène Cixous, Rootprints
Author: Mireille Calle-Gruber
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2012-11-12
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1134731671

Helene Cixous is undoubtedly one of the most brilliant and innovative contemporary thinkers. Published here in English for the first time Helene Cixous, Rootprints is an ideal introduction to Cixous's theory and her fiction, tracing her development as a writer and intellectual whose remarkable prespicacity and electrifying poetic force are known world-wide. Unprecedented in its form and content this collection breaks new ground in the theory and practice of auto/biography. Cixous's creative reflections on the past provide occasion for scintillating forays into the future. The text includes: * an extended interview between Cixous and Calle-Gruber, exploring Cixous's creative and intellectual processes * a revealing collection of photographs taken from Cixous's family album, set against a poetic reflection by the author * selections from Cixous's private notebooks * a contribution by Jacques Derrida * original 'thing-pieces' by Calle-Gruber.

Hélène Cixous

Hélène Cixous
Author: Lee A. Jacobus
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2005-07-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1135300259

First published in 1999. Each volume in the Lit Book Series will contain a wide range of essays on a particular author, theme or genre. By offering a forum for oftentimes competing, but equally compelling, theoretical points of view within each volume, the editors hope to generate interest, debate, dissent, appreciation and attention for each volume’s topic. The Lit Book Series will provide a valuable venue for scholars, writers and general readers to encounter, examine, produce and discuss insightful, sound scholarship about important fields of study. This international collection of essays regards the work of Hélène Cixous with all the complexity that she herself brings to her engagement with literature and psychology. Cixous is well known as an interpreter of Freudian and Lacanian theories, especially those connecting gender and the production of language. She is also a noted writer of fiction and drama as well as a distinguished theorist of literary feminism.

"Coming to Writing" and Other Essays

Author: Hélène Cixous
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 1991
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780674144378

This collection presents six essays by one of France's most remarkable contemporary authors. A notoriously playful stylist, here Hélène Cixous explores how the problematics of the sexes--viewed as a paradigm for all difference, which is the organizing principle behind identity and meaning--manifest themselves, write themselves, in texts. These superb translations do full justice to Cixous's prose, to its songlike flow and allusive brilliance.