Exoticism in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea

• Authors: Cristina-Georgiana Voicu
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The notion of an endless and exotic space reflected in the title of Jean Rhys’s novel includes the possibility of hidden meanings as well as an intense feeling of the unknown and the inexpressible, which permeates the entire story and becomes an important source of the sublime. The self-conscious use of exoticist techniques and modalities of cultural representation might be considered less as a response to the phenomenon of the postcolonial exotic than as a further symptom of it, a result of the commodification of cultural difference.

Keywords

EN

exoticism; cultural differences; colonial conflicts; sublime

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Gender Studies
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 11
• Issue: Supplement
• Pages: 91-101

Dates

published

2012-12-01

online

2012-12-28

Contributors

author

Cristina-Georgiana Voicu

• “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University, Iaşi 11 A, Carol I Blvd, 700506, Iaşi, Romania

References

• Ashcroft, Bill et al., The Empire writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. London: Routledge, 1989.
• Botting, Fred. Gothic. London: Routledge, 1996.
• Foster, Stephen William. “The Exotic as a Symbolic System.” Dialectical Anthropology. (7)1, (1982): 21-22.[Crossref]
• Hooks, Bell. Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. Boston, Massachussetts: South End Press, 1990.
• Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. London: Penguin, 1968.
• Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.
• Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism.” Critical Inquiry 12.1 (1985): 250.
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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10320-012-0008-7