Genre Departures: Women Writers and the Crisis of Representing NationalSocialism and World War II

Genre Departures is a comparatist study of womenwriters responses to National Socialism and WorldWar II. Part One addresses historical andphilosophical responses by Rebecca West and HannahArendt. Part Two addresses experimental literaryresponses by Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, and thepostwar Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann. GenreDepartures examines literary works in a number ofgenres: poetry and poetic meditation; journalism,travel, and memoir; neo-realist and postmodernistnovel; it also crosses disciplines in order toexamine writers who themselves crossed disciplinesand in some cases national boundaries. Since thetexts were first published between 1936 and 1971,they begin with premonitory anticipations of the warand conclude with responses that are distinctlypostwar and retrospective. Genre Departures suggeststhat the ruptures created by the ensuing war produceda seismic shift in the world of these women writersthat expressed itself in their intellectual andaesthetic production and that ultimately theirefforts constituted a historically-inducedexperimental movement.