In her interview about Gut Symmetries, Winterson claims,
I write about love because it’s the most important thing in the world. I write about sex because often it feels like the most important thing in the world. But I set these personal private passions against an outside world – sometimes hostile, usually strange, so that we can see what happens when inner and outer realities collide. (jeanettewinterson.com)
What is particularly interesting about Winterson’s texts is indeed the collision of realities which she mentions in the above quote, that is, how she juxtaposes various worlds (from history, fairy tales, medicine, quantum physics or computers) and the inner world of human beings. Her main purpose is showing that capacity of language in describing reality is more than we could expect.
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The author also describes herself as “passionate about language” (jeanettewinterson.com) and “in love with books”, which is visible in her incredibly intertextual novels which clearly show her poetic inspirations (the Bible, T.S. Eliot, metaphysical poets, Gertrude Stein) and her concentration on revitalizing “language that does more than convey meaning” (jeanettewinterson.com).
Defamiliarization seems to be omnipresent in Winterson’s fiction. The author herself says, “[i];n a new century we need new ways of looking at familiar things – that’s the only way we make them ours, otherwise they’re just borrowed and soon become clichés” (jeanettewinterson.com). Thus, Winterson’s fiction encourages her readers to look at the world differently, but defamiliarization leads them to truth about themselves which is free from stereotypes and easy solutions. This can be done through reading.
Winterson is not a typical novelist, and her difficult, yet engrossing, prose was subject to various critical analyses. The most important collections of essays which have been published so far are “I’m telling you stories”: Jeanette Winterson and the Politics of Reading (1998) edited by Helena Grice and Tim Woods, The Novels of Jeanette Winterson (2005) by Merja Makinen, Jeanette Winterson (2006) by Susan Onega, Jeanette Winterson (2007) edited by Sonya Andermahr, Transgressing Boundaries in Jeanette Winterson’s Fiction (2009) by Sonia Front and Love in Jeanette Winterson’s Novels (2010) by Julie Ellam. These publications mainly focus on gender and sexuality which are analyzed through the prism of feminist and queer criticism. The critics referred to theories of écriture féminine by Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva, and they underlined a strong link between Winterson’s writing and French feminism. What is also inevitable in commenting on Winterson’s texts is writing about love which, as I have mentioned, is the preoccupation of all her novels. Thus, Ellam’s monography, as the title suggests, is devoted strictly to this subject.
The following book is an analysis and meditation of Winterson’s five novels: The Passion, Sexing the Cherry, Written on the Body, Gut Symmetries and The PowerBook. In my view, these are the novels in which poetic quality of her prose is most visible and thought-provoking. The first chapter is going to be devoted to the distinction between two key terms which are included in the title of this work, namely “prose” and “poetry”. This part of the book is going to outline the “in-between” genres which can neither be categorized as prose nor as poetry. Further in this chapter, I am also going to present Winterson’s oeuvre in connection with the categorization which I discussed earlier. I will refer to criticism about her works which points at the topic which I am mostly concerned with: Winterson’s defamiliarizing strategies and poetic quality of her style. Her language is frequently referred to as poetic and original, but the ←11 | 12→critics never elaborate on these statements. I am going to attempt at answering the question: What makes Winterson’s prose poetic? What kind of devices does she use and what is original about them? I will also concentrate on the aspect of storytelling in her fiction which is as obvious as her preoccupation with love. I am going to analyze how storytelling and poetry overlap and resonate with one another.
My book will attempt to prove that Winterson’s prose, even if so concentrated on language as such and expressive of author’s love of words, is not merely an experiment for experiment’s sake and is not a collection of puns and linguistic games but a multilayered construction which makes emotional depth of these texts self-evident. Winterson’s intricate texts which are always structured circularly reflect the way of human thinking and feeling which, as she often underlines, is never linear.
In spite of Winterson’s criticism of linearity, I have analyzed the novels chronologically since it seems adequate in the light of Winterson’s development as a writer. To be exact, her consecutive books seem to comment on each other and elaborate on the notions and problems which had been mentioned before. Reading the novels in chronological order also enables us to observe how poetic quality of her language developed from novel to novel and in what way she changed her writing techniques. Analyzing Winterson’s texts, I am compelled to ask questions about her process of constant questioning of boundaries between prose and poetry.
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1 Between Poetry and Prose: Genres of the Middle
The first part of this chapter aims at emphasizing the most important aspects of the prose poem as a genre. Firstly, it seems crucial to compare and contrast the prose poem with other related genres, namely poetic prose and polyphonic prose. This comparison proves to be indispensable since these three terms are strictly connected with each other, as demonstrated by the presence of numerous dictionary entries. This chapter also attempts to outline a brief history of the prose poem as a genre, naming its initiators, major critics and the publications devoted to it. It appears that the genre of the prose poem is often said to undermine the boundary between prose and poetry, which inevitably leads to undermining the notion of “a genre” as such. The next part of this chapter deals with Jeanette Winterson’s oeuvre in the context of prose versus poetry since her works illustrate an interesting tension between the prosaic and the poetic. This chapter will be an outline of the main features of Winterson’s discourse, namely the use of repetition in various ways combining poetic techniques such as metaphor with elements of storytelling which is abundant in her novels. The author is compelled to practice endless storytelling, which is to a great extent repetitive (using refrains, intertextuality, clichés), trying, at the same time, to escape repetition and create unique language which would transcend “language as a prisonhouse of repetition” (Gustar qtd. in Andermahr 55). This chapter also sums up critics’ views on the prosaic/poetic features of Winterson’s works, the relationship between storytelling and poeticity in Winterson’s oeuvre.
Before elaborating on the prose poem as a genre, the very definition of this term should be explained, as well as differences between the prose poem, poetic prose and polyphonic prose. Various dictionaries of literary terms make a distinction between the abovementioned terms with these definitions noticeably complementing each other. According to Harry Shaw, poetic prose “makes use of cadence, rhythm, figurative language or other devices ordinarily associated with poetry” (291). J.A. Cuddon gives a similar definition of the term, enumerating examples of figurative devices such as onomatopoeia, assonance and metaphor. Cuddon also mentions the length of poetic prose, claiming that it is ←13 | 14→“usually employed in short works or in brief passages” (520), and he underlines that the effect of raising the “emotional temperature” is achieved. This definition is enriched with examples of prose authored by de Quincey, Rimbaud, Wilde, Woolf, Faulkner and Durrell.
Polyphonic prose often seems to correspond with poetic prose, and the former is frequently defined in dictionaries of literary terms. Harry Shaw defines polyphonic prose as “prose which exhibits such devices of poetry as alliteration,