The World According to Bridget Jones

Katarzyna, SMYCZYNSKA, The World According to Bridget Jones, Oxford / Bern / Berlin / Bruxelles / Francfort-sur-le-Main /  New York / Vienne, Peter Lang (Literary and Cultural Theory), 2007, 195 p.
ISBN 978-3-631-55572-9
US-ISBN 978-0-8204-8703-8


SUMMARY

The World According to Bridget Jones: Discourses of Identity in Chicklit Fictions examines the cultural functioning of a popular contemporary strand in mainstream Anglo-American literature, known as «chicklit». Assuming that the interpretive potential of chicklit novels is connected with the process of identity formation, the book points out the possibility of the reader's identification with certain fictional discourses permeating the convention. The study focuses on complex links between Anglo-American cultural discourses and narrative constructions of identity and explores narrative representations of contemporary family, love, and sexuality. It also tackles the relation between chicklit and consumerism, reconstructing salient characteristics of contemporary consumer culture and the position of the fictional female consumer within discourses of body, beauty, and shopping.


CONTENTS

Chicklit fictions
Popular culture
Theories of identity
Family
Love
Sexuality
Consumerism.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Katarzyna Smyczynska, Assistant Professor at Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz (Poland), studied English and European Law at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, and was a holder of a Soros Foundation/Foreign and British Commonwealth Office Scholarship (Oxford 2001). In 2005 she received her Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Silesia. Her research interests include contemporary popular fiction for women, cultural theory, and gender studies.