Description

To this date, no comprehensive study of Sylvia Townsend Warner's short stories has been undertaken. The few publications that exist have concentrated on individual stories, but have not attempted to link them in terms of either content or form. This study closes a gap by highlighting the way Warner's stories shift to off-centre positions and by discussing Warner's highly innovative narrative style that does not conform in any way to conventional modernist or postmodernist standards. The monograph further sets out to outline the way in which Warner constantly challenges the categories we apply to classify our surroundings and analyses how Warner succeeds in creating 'queer', that is, non-heteronormative as well as strange and eccentric stories without explicitly opposing the so-called norms of her time. In this, Side-Stepping Normativity joins a vibrant conversation in queer studies which revolves around the question how critics can approach literary texts from a non-antagonistic position. Rather than focussing on the role of the critic, however, the monograph shows that Warner's texts have long achieved what queer theorists seek to achieve on an analytical level.