Criticism

Allen, Carolyn. "The Erotics of Nora's Narrative in Djuna Barnes's Nightwood." Signs 19, No. 1 (Autumn 1993): 177-200.

Presents Nora's narrative in Barnes's Nightwood as "a narrative of lesbian erotics" and then "argue[s] how such an erotics critiques Freud's influential writings on narcissism and desire."

Bockting, Margaret. "Performers and the Erotic in Four Interviews by Djuna Barnes." Centennial Review XLI, No. 1 (Winter 1997): 183-95.

Explores the identity of women and actors in the early twentieth century by looking at four interviews conducted by Barnes with Mimi Aguglia, Gaby Deslys, Yvette Guilbert, and Alla Nazimova.

Broe, Mary Lynn. "'A Love from the Back of the Heart': The Story Djuna Wrote for Charles Henri." Review of Contemporary Literature 13, No. 3 (Fall 1993): 22-32.

Studies Barnes's story "Behind the Heart" and what it tells about Barnes's relationship with Charles Henri Ford.

Castricano, Jodey. "Rude Awakenings: or What Happens When a Lesbian Reads the 'Hieroglyphics of Sleep' in Djuna Barnes' Nightwood." West Coast 28, No. 3 (Winter 1994–95): 106-16.

Traces the configuration of desire in Barnes's Nightwood, especially focusing on the last chapter.

Dalton, Anne B. "Escaping from Eden: Djuna Barnes' Revision of Psychoanalytic Theory and Her Treatment of Father-Daughter Incest in Ryder." Women's Studies 22 (1993): 163-79.

Analyzes Barnes's presentation of incest in Ryder and how her portrayal went against the prevailing psychoanalytic theories of father-daughter sexuality.

Kent, Kathryn R. "'Lullaby for a Lady's Lady': Lesbian Identity in Ladies Almanack." Review of Contemporary Fiction 13, No. 3(Fall 1993): 89-96.

Explores lesbian identity in Barnes's Ladies Almanack.

Michel, Frann. "Displacing Castration: Nightwood, Ladies Almanack, and Feminine Writing." Contemporary Literature 30, No. 1 (Spring 1989): 33-58.

Asserts that "Barnes's works suggest that the value of ideas of the feminine and feminine writing consists less in their postulation of a new language or their call for a revolutionary future than in the possibilities they offer for new ways of thinking language, ways that recognize the subversive and potentially revolutionary elements already operative within the languages of the past and present."

Scott, Bonnie Kime. "Barnes Being 'Beast Familiar': Representation on the Margins of Modernism." Review of Contemporary Fiction 13, No. 3 (Fall 1993): 41-52.

Discusses Barnes's use of the bestial in her work, and what that means to her portrayal of women.

Stevenson, Sheryl. "Ryder as Contraception: Barnes v. the Reproduction of Mothering." Review of Contemporary Fiction 13, No. 3 (Fall 1993): 97-106.

Provides a female-centered reading of Barnes's Ryder asserting that the novel "constitutes Djuna Barnes's strongest statement against women's enslavement to reproduction."

Winkiel, Laura. "Circuses and Spectacles: Public Culture in Nightwood." Journal of Modern Literature 21, No. 1 (Summer 1997): 7-28.

Analyzes the role of the circus and spectacle in Barnes's Nightwood, the main characters' relationship to the circus, and how the circus affects the public culture.