Anaïs Nin and the remaking of self
Subtitle: gender, modernism, and narrative identity
By: Diane Richard-Allerdyce.
Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: DeKalb
Language: eng
Number of pages: 215
Subjects: Nin, Anaïs, 1903-1977 -- Criticism and interpretation.; Lacan, Jacques, 1901-; Women and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century.; Psychological fiction, American -- History and criticism.; Narration (Rhetoric) -- History -- 20th century.; Psychoanalysis and literature -- United States.; Modernism (Literature) -- United States.; Sex (Psychology) in literature.; Gender identity in literature.; Self in literature.; Fiction -- Technique.
Description: Anais Nin is simultaneously one of the most interesting and troubling figures of the Modernist period. Though her provocative diaries, documenting relationships with such renowned figures as Henry Miller and Otto Rank, secured her place in literary history, Nin's writing has yet to attract the critical attention it deserves.

With one of the first critical studies to treat Nin's work as a unified whole, Richard-Allerdyce reclaims Nin's writings as she traces the development of Nin's theories of gender and the creative self through her experimental fiction, criticism, and diaries.

Nin's struggle for success is presented as part of a long and complex history - that of women's effort to find a means of expressing female experiences in writing. For Nin, the struggle included an attempt to embody a "feminine mode of being" in her writing. Because Nin herself stressed the centrality of gender to her identity, her relation to women's studies and her treatment of gender provide the basis for understanding her work.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [199]-203) and index.