There is no autobiographyOnly art and lies

Jeanette Winterson• Born 1959• Educated Oxford• Oranges 1985• The Passion 1987• Sexing the Cherry 1989• Written on the Body 1992• OBE 2006

Metafiction

•Fiction about fiction•Allusive, referential•Intertextuality

Intertextuality

•Similar to allusion – reference to another text within the text you are reading

•Requires knowledge of other text for meaning to be activated

•Deepens and increases complexity of themes, images etc within text, creates relationship between two texts

The matter that detains us now may seem,To many, neither dignified enoughNor arduous, yet will not be scorned by them,Who, looking inward, have observed the tiesThat bind the perishable hours of lifeEach to the other, & the curious propsBy which the world of memory and thoughtExists & is sustained.

William Wordsworth, “The Prelude” VII 458-66

Goblin Market• Sisterhood/female loyalty• Often read as feminized

Christ story• Lure of the forbidden• “Jeannie” died because

succumbed to desire for forbidden fruit.

Teresa of Avilar

•Bildungsroman•Quest for spiritual life•Search for vocation may be corrupted or

frustrated by environment

Percival• Exile• Bildungsroman• Ignorance of heritage• Grail Quest

Ruth• Loyalty• Exile• Bonds between women

Repeated themes/motifs•Quest for perfection/grace/knowledge•“The Interior City” (equated with

Augustine’s City of God, Blake’s Jerusalem)

•Awakening (both sexual and intellectual)•Development – the bildungsroman•Choice between social belonging/loyalty

and “higher” calling/vocation/love (presented symbolically by frequent juxtaposition of transcendence and banal)