John Fowles : visionary and voyeur / / Brooke Lenz.

• Superior document: Costerus ; new ser., 175
• Author: Lenz, Brooke.
• Year of Publication: 2008
• Language: English
• Series: Costerus ; new ser., v. 175.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (259 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

Best known as the author of The French Lieutenant’s Woman and The Magus , John Fowles achieved both critical and popular success as a writer of profound and provocative fiction. In this innovative new study, Brooke Lenz reconsiders Fowles’ controversial contributions to feminist thought. Combining literary criticism and feminist standpoint theory, John Fowles: Visionary and Voyeur examines the problems that women readers and feminist critics encounter in Fowles’ frequently voyeuristic fiction. Over the course of his career, this book argues, Fowles progressively created women characters who subvert voyeuristic exploitation and who author alternative narratives through which they can understand their experiences, cope with oppressive dominant systems, and envision more authentic and just communities. Especially in the later novels, Fowles’ women characters offer progressive alternative approaches to self-awareness, interpersonal relationships, and social reform – despite Fowles’ problematic idealization of women and even his self-professed “cruelty” to the women in his own life. This volume will be of interest to critics and readers of contemporary fiction, but most of all, to men and women who seek a progressive, inclusive feminism.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- ON FOWLES AND FEMINISM -- VOYEURISM AND OTHER VISUAL PLEASURES -- OBJECTIFICATION AND EXPLOITATION: VICTIMIZED PERSPECTIVES IN THE COLLECTOR -- A CONFLICT OF GENDERED PERSPECTIVES: VOYEURISM, VIOLENCE, AND SEDUCTION IN THE MAGUS -- A CRISIS OF AUTHORITY: FANTASY AND FEMINISM IN THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN -- WOMEN IN THE WASTELAND: ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVES IN THE EBONY TOWER -- WHOLE SIGHT; AND DESOLATION: SITUATED KNOWLEDGES IN DANIEL MARTIN -- INTERLUDE: MANTISSA -- SEDUCTIVE AND SITUATED DISSENT: A MAGGOT AS WINGED CREATURE -- ON AUTHORITY AND AUTHENTICITY -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX.