Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002
Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-135) and index
Introduction: Djuna Barnes and Bertha Harris -- Reading Erotics/Following Djuna -- pt. 1. Djuna Barnes: The Erotics of Nurture. 1. Nightwood: Gender, Narcissism, and the Erotic Maternal in the Narrative of Nora Flood. 2. Writing toward Nightwood: Seduction in the "Little Girl" Stories -- pt. 2. Jeanette Winterson: The Erotics of Risk -- pt. 3. Rebecca Brown: The Erotics of Excess and the Difficulties of Difference
Following Djuna reads contemporary novelists in the tradition of Djuna Barnes, arguing for the importance of women's fiction in understanding women's erotics - emotional and sexual exchanges between women. Barnes's Nightwood, with its experimental form and passionate language, has made its mark on contemporary writers, and Carolyn Allen argues that Harris, Winterson, and Brown continue Barnes's explorations of obsession, loss, excess, and power between women lovers. Allen stresses the importance of difference in lovers who are "like", and the influence of memory in the making of desire. At the same time, she illuminates the ongoing trade-offs between passion and comfort, and between loss and discovery as crucial to the intensity of women's erotics
