Book review

Alina Preda: Jeanette Winterson

and the Metamorphosis of Literary Writing

Submitted to: Alina Preda, Assistant Professor, PhD

Written by: Mihly Rka

BabeBolyai University, Faculty of Letters

BCS, 1st Year

Representations of gender in the contemporary British novel

 Cluj-Napoca

2016

This full length study, titled: Jeanette Winterson and the Metamorphosis of Literary
Writing is a book written by Alina Preda, who is currently a professor at Babe Bolyai
University, Cluj-Napoca, Faculty of Letters, Department of English Language and Literature.
The book was published in 2010 by Argonaut in a Literature series.

The book mainly deals with Jeanette Wintersons literary work and its issues, but also
discusses a wide range of other matters, like key concepts such as knowledge, realism, reality
and fiction, modernism, postmodernism, self-discovery, self-continuity, hypertext etc. that help
us to get a fuller understanding of the metamorphosis of literary writing and also of the fact
that literature cant be discussed in isolation from other fields and sources.

This study goes beyond mirroring only the literary issues, it employs the discourse of
sciences, technologies, and presents the main theories from other well-known academic
writers such as: Roland Barthes, Foucalt, Landow etc.

Alina Preda reflects on much debated theories and problems such as the phenomenon
of intertextuality, the Death of the Author 1, the politics of the self-representation etc. She
draws on different narratorial instances and devices pointing out the intricate relation between
literature and other areas of culture, science and philosophy. The author successfully points
out that she meant to show how legitimate investigation of the relationship between
disciplines really is2.

By offering an in-depth analyses of the fundamental ages that have marked the
transformation and evaluation of literary production and consumption 3 in order to define

1 The Death of the Author is a 1967 essay by the French literary critic and
theorist Roland Barthes.

2 Preda Alina, Jeanette Winterson and the Metamorphoses of Literary Writing, page 20,
PRESAUNIVERSITARA CLUJEANA , CLUJ-NAPOCA, 2010.

3 Preda Alina, Jeanette Winterson and the Metamorphoses of Literary Writing, page
21Preda Alina, Jeanette Winterson and the Metamorphoses of Literary Writing, page 253
essential literary terms, the author outstandingly presents the transformation of the novel from
realism to postmodernism.

Her ability to combine discussion of texts with broad arguments about the nature of
literature and literary writing (which are supported with detailed evidence), and also about the
principles assessing it demonstrate the books strengths and its significant contributions to the
field. She covers all the phases of literary understanding though the emphasis remains on
showing, accentuating and bringing out the vitality characteristic of Jeanette Wintersons
literary style, also on her placement in the literary canon. Alina Preda also draws on towards a
Wintersonian Ars Poetica.

The author organizes his work in four major chapters: 1. The convergence of literature
and technology, 2. Reality, Transdisciplinary knowledge and literary writing, 3. Truth, Genre
and the Hermeneutics of subjectivity, 4. Towards a Wintersonian Ars Poetica.

In the introduction she presents Jeanette Winterson seen often as a rather eccentric
character on the usually reserved English literary stage, a controversial author admired by
some and criticized by many, not only for her alternative lifestyle that she neither keeps secret
nor advertises but also her frankness and lack of modesty often perceived as blatant
arrogance.4 In introducing Jeanette Winterson, she outlines in a very short, but condensed
way the reception from critics, the public and journalists alike, increasing the readers
attention in finding more about her and her literary work. The author shortly presents the main
works that will be discussed later in the book, giving a brief introduction into Wintersons
novels: Oranges are not the only fruit, Boating for Beginners, The Passion, Sexing the
Cherry, Written on the Body, GUT Symmetries, The World and Other Places, The Stone Gods,
The.PowerBook and more.

She starts by telling about Susana Onegas monumentuous work (the first full length
study of Jeanette Wintersons work as a whole, containing in-depth analyses of her nine
novel), who also points out that one cannot approach Wintersons novels merely relying on a
single analytical perspective. Alina Preda clearly agrees with Onegas opinion and suggestion,
because her study points to a wide variety of themes, discourse, references, topics, which are

4 In Jeanette Winterson and the Metamorphoses of Literary Writing, page 7, The

Salon Interview, April, 28, 1997. Interview conducted by Laura Miller
all essential in providing a comprehensive analysis of Wintersons work, especially of her first
cycle of novels, from Oranges to The.PowerBook.

The first chapter deals with the significant transformations in the nature of literature.
Where she analyses the universality of storytelling and discusses in four sub-chapters the
novel and its complex relationships with developments in technology. She focuses on the
Printing Age, The technological age, The cinematic age, The information age, and
Wintersons Internet Hype. Alina Preda raises much debated questions like: can we talk about
the Death of the Author? What will happen at this transitional period? How will it affect the
development of the novel? Are the Book and the Novel coming to an end? One of the main
strength of this book is that the author not just raises important questions, but by offering a
complex analysis, which is highly documented, she also gives satisfying answers.

She proves that one cannot focus only on the writing itself without considering that
there is a writer too. What she means is that judging a book by its writer is not the way one
should approach a book, but this should not imply condemning the author to death. 5 The
author also brings strong evidences to support the view that there is no such thing as pure
genre. One always has to consider crossing the genre boundaries, and dealing with
intertextuality. The book shows that Jeanette Winterson loves to cross these boundaries and
combine aesthetic and scientific discourses without causing the narrative to collapse. It
presents a wide range of examples where the authors link totally different fields in order to
engage the readers and to create something innovative, refreshing, without losing from their
works value.

Reading through the last chapters we get a fuller comprehension of Wintersons

novels, where Alina Preda along with Winterson states that It seems that nowadays it is not
art that imitates life but life that imitates art, so why couldnt literary art be the saviour of the
post-modern self? Ours is a century of fakes, of simulacra. In the post-modern society, more
than any other age, [...] that [a]rt does not imitate life. Art anticipates life. Since nothing exist
anymore independent of its representation, the only logical conclusion is that, if we desire to
change how things are, what we must change is how they are represented. 6 I think this is the
message that conveys Winterson along with the author of this study: the aim is to open the

5 Alina Preda, Jeanette Winterson and the Metamorphosis of literary writing, page
19

6Alina Preda, Jeanette Winterson and the Metamorphosis of literary writing, page 260
readers eyes to a new perspective, to familiarize them with a narrative which implies a
variety of themes, discourse, references, and topics.

This thesis stands as an important contribution to the literary understanding,

meanwhile its not drawn from other theories either, which are explicitly linked. The synthesis
of methods offer us an essential theory of literature and helps us to understand Jeanette
Wintersons fascinating literary writings. I find Alina Predas suggestion of Returning to the
Book really relevant, even if it emerges into a new form. And as a conclusion Id like to
close my review with her own words: The Book is dead! Long live the Book!7

7Alina Preda, Jeanette Winterson and the Metamorphosis of literary writing, page 269