Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Naomi Lindstrom

Critical Essay by Naomi Lindstrom

SOURCE: "Clarice Lispector: Articulating Women's Experience," in Women 's Voice in Latin American Literature, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1989, pp. 23-45.

In the following essay, a revised version of an article originally published in Chasqui: Revista de Literatura Latinoamericana in 1978, Lindstrom argues that while Lispector's philosophical debt is often ascribed to the male French existentialists, her emphasis on women's diminished existential possibilities in the stories "Amor, " "Devaneio e embriaguez duma rapariga, " and "Preciosidade" shows a greater affinity with the theories of feminist existential thinker Simone de Beauvoir.

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Looking at the critical commentary on the fiction of Clarice Lispector, one immediately notes how much attention has been given to the existential themes that run through her work. Benedito Nunes and others have studied Lispector's writings as the literary elaboration of a set of philosophical concerns: the human being's need to make choices and take responsibility; the terror of contemplating...
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