A History of Feminist Literary CriticismGill Plain, Susan Sellers Feminism has transformed the academic study of literature, fundamentally altering the canon of what is taught and setting new agendas for literary analysis. In this authoritative history of feminist literary criticism, leading scholars chart the development of the practice from the Middle Ages to the present. The first section of the book explores protofeminist thought from the Middle Ages onwards, and analyses the work of pioneers such as Wollstonecraft and Woolf. The second section examines the rise of second-wave feminism and maps its interventions across the twentieth century. A final section examines the impact of postmodernism on feminist thought and practice. This book offers a comprehensive guide to the history and development of feminist literary criticism and a lively reassessment of the main issues and authors in the field. It is essential reading for all students and scholars of feminist writing and literary criticism. |
Contents
Part II Creating a feminist literary criticism | 101 |
Part III Poststructuralism and beyond | 209 |
Index | 342 |
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Page 122 - ... act" is distinguished from performativity insofar as the latter consists in a reiteration of norms which precede, constrain, and exceed the performer and in that sense cannot be taken as the fabrication of the performer's "will" or "choice"; further, what is "performed" works to conceal, if not to disavow, what remains opaque, unconscious, unperformable.
Page 57 - Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history.
Page 20 - Feign'd them; nay, one would think that he had been Metamorphosed from a Man to a Woman, for who could Describe Cleopatra Better than he hath done, and many other Females of his own Creating, as Nan Page, Mrs.
Page 36 - Educate women like men,' says Rousseau, 'and the more they resemble our sex the less power will they have over us.' This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves.
Page 269 - By and large within the women's movement today, white women focus upon their oppression as women and ignore differences of race, sexual preference, class, and age. There is a pretense to a homogeneity of experience covered by the word sisterhood that does not in fact exist.
Page 51 - I might call a philosophy; at any rate it is a consrant idea of mine: that behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we — I mean all human beings — are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art.
Page 31 - Women are very sensible of this ; for which reason, they learn to lisp, to totter in their walk, to counterfeit weakness, and even sickness.
Page 12 - Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception ; in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children ; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
Page 171 - Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organization.
Page 53 - in fact, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.