The Terms of the Text

Abstract

Chapter 9 examines how unconventional written work is currently pushing the limits of our understanding of genre. Women from elsewhere are drawing from personal experience in order to disturb tired distinctions between “text” and “life” in imaginative fashions that reconfigure the reading experience. Their creative work is contributing to liberating these authors from overworked modes of expression and worn expectations, and allows them to break free from rigid definitions. It is significant that a number of worldwide women writers are now opting to compose works in a variety of creative forms ranging from the bande dessinée to the journal to the photo essay to récits of all sorts, expanding our conceptions of generic classification by playing with everything from titles to formats within the written work. This inventiveness includes a great deal of attention to visual arts and music, occasionally through the integration of works of art and musical notations in the text itself, and other times through allusions to artistic and musical pieces, or even through the construction of passages that liken literature to these other art forms. Authors are more and more impressively contributing to their own publishing profiles by writing “autobiographically” in variations that elude any clear categorization, but that reveal intimate details in texts that embody movement, progression, and development in exciting new terms.