| ||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Ryder (American Literature) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
A work of grim, mature beauty . . . she has caught life prismatically. --Eugene Jolas
Product Description
When it was first published in 1928, Djuna Barnes 's Ryder, a bawdy mock- Elizabethan chronicle of a family very much like her own, was described in the Saturday Review as the most amazing book ever written by a woman. One of modern literature 's first and best denunciations of patriarchal repression, Ryder employs an exuberant prose by which narrator Julie Ryder derides her hated father, polygamous Wendell Ryder. Barnes satirizes masculinity and domesticity by way of parable, poem, and play, and a prose style that echoes Chaucer, Shakespeare, the Bible, and Robert Burton 's Anatomy of Melancholy. For this edition, several of Barnes 's previously suppressed illustrations have been restored.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The great literary eccentric Djuna Barnes, beloved by (amongst other major literary figures)T.S. Eliot, is best known for her neo-Jacobean literary works, the novel "Nightwood" and the play "Antiphon." Although I have immense fondness for the novel "Nightwood," I think that her novel "Ryder" is her absolute masterpiece. A book of Rabelaisian humour and joy, it veritably bursts forth all over the place with Life and Lust. One would think that critical followers of Bakhtin(i.e., Mikhail Bakhtin of "Rabelais and his World" fame who advanced a 'polyphonic' theory of the novel form) would have a field day with this novel. And what of feminist literary critics? This book is a masterpiece of twentieth century literature. The fact that this book is not studied in twentieth century literature classes alongside the works of Eliot, Pound, Lawrence, Yeats and William Carlos Williams is an implicit reproach to the molasses-brained sloths who inhabit academia. But don't just read this novel because it's a masterpiece(and it is, children) - read it because it's fun! Does Djuna Barnes have a command of the English language? Metaphorically speaking, she brandishes a whip! Open these pages and you'll fall in love with this book - and maybe you'll fall in love with Djuna Barnes, too! I do not try to advance this book's reputation at the expense of her other work. By all means, read "Nightwood" and "Antiphon" - they're not just (to use that mean little phrase) 'minor
masterpieces.' "Ryder," "Antiphon," and "Nightwood" all belong on required reading lists in the English-speaking world. Let's storm the literary canon and place a crown on Djuna Barnes's head, where it richly belongs. Buy this book. In a manner of speaking, ride this book - and just maybe it'll ride you, too. As Roland Barthes would say, why deny yourself the pleasure? I remain...Greg Cameron, Lost and Profound in Surrey, B.C., Canada.
masterpieces.' "Ryder," "Antiphon," and "Nightwood" all belong on required reading lists in the English-speaking world. Let's storm the literary canon and place a crown on Djuna Barnes's head, where it richly belongs. Buy this book. In a manner of speaking, ride this book - and just maybe it'll ride you, too. As Roland Barthes would say, why deny yourself the pleasure? I remain...Greg Cameron, Lost and Profound in Surrey, B.C., Canada.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is an amazing work. A mostly autobiographical parody, Barnes uses Ryder as sort of a twisted extended metaphor for the rest of the world. The beautiful and inventive prose, though often obscure, illustrates the life of the Ryder family poignantly and indignantly. Written in various styles, the book is bound to touch each and every reader.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful
A Great Achievement
5 July 1999
Format:Paperback
This is an amazing work. A mostly autobiographical parody, Barnes uses Ryder as sort of a twisted extended metaphor for the rest of the world. The beautiful and inventive prose, though often obscure, illustrates the life of the Ryder family poignantly and indignantly. Written in various styles, the book is bound to touch each and every reader.
3 of 6 people found the following review helpful
an astonishing writer
23 Sep 2006
Format:Paperback
It wasn't only T.S. Eliot who described Djuna Barnes's style as Elizabethan. (Though the poet Marie Ponsot has described her as Jacobean.) What period could encompass this twentieth century writer's talent for casting spells both psychological and atmospheric? I've never read anyone quite like her. If only James Joyce had been a little more talented, he might have been Barnesian--but few of us know this; join us!
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Fiction > Classics
- Books > Fiction > Contemporary Fiction
- Books > Fiction > Literary Fiction
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
