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Surfaces of Strangeness explores the discourses that surround the concept of madness. It examines the way in which madness is expressed, especially in literature, the uses to which it is put by particular authors and the effect that this has on the reader. Discourses of madness provide an effective means of exploring and expressing the workings of the human mind, but they can also be a devastating means of manipulating people.
Surfaces of Strangeness focuses primarily on the autobiography and novels of Janet Frame, and examines her life and work by exploring how madness is expressed in specific works what it can be made to represent, what it can reveal and what it can conceal. The concept of madness is powerfully present in Frames work: in the events and experiences she describes in her autobiography, and in the representations throughout her novels of the perturbed and perturbing inner worlds of those who are rejected by society. Her works reflect her own development, revealing the way in which the power of the term schizophrenia, imposed by others, is vanquished by replacing it with the term author. Her success, as such, is a remarkable achievement, requiring great courage and skill and bearing invaluable testimony to the workings of the human mind.
SIMONE OETTLI-VAN DELDEN was born in Amsterdam and grew up in the Bay of Plenty. She attended Epsom Girls Grammar School in Auckland in the sixties and finished an MA in English and French literature at the University of Canterbury in 1971. After some time working as a photojournalist and teaching in the English Department at Auckland University, she married the photographer Max Oettli and left for Europe in 1976. In Switzerland, she did a Masters thesis with George Steiner and later a doctorate. She teaches English and New Zealand literature at the University of Geneva, has two sons and lives in a small house amongst the vineyards.
