Writing Women's Literary History

Writing Women's Literary History PDF Author: Margaret J. M. Ezell
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801855085
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Ezell critically examines these successful women's literary histories and applies to them the same self-conscious feminism that critics have applied to more traditional methods. Drawing both on French feminisms and on recent historicist scholarship, Ezell points us to new possibilities for the recovery of early modern women's literary history. By championing the recovery of "lost" women writers and insisting on reevaluating the past, women's studies and feminist theory have effected dramatic changes in the ways English literary history is written and taught. In Writing Women's Literary History, Margaret Ezell critically examines these successful women's literary histories and applies to them the same self-conscious feminism that critics have applied to more traditional methods. According to Ezell, by relying not only on past male scholarship but also on inherited notions of "tradition," some feminist historicists replicate the evolutionary, narrative model of history that originally marginalized women who wrote before 1700. Drawing both on French feminisms and on recent historicist scholarship, Ezell points us to new possibilities for the recovery of early modern women's literary history.

Women and Literary History

Women and Literary History PDF Author: Katherine Binhammer
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
ISBN: 9780874138245
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
"The essays provide new research into women's literary history from the late seventeenth century to the Modernist period covering topics such as women's science and anti-slavery writing, midwifery, women and the novel, and lesbian literary history. Essays discuss the writing of Jane Sharp, Jane Barker, Anne Finch, Aphra Behn, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Harriet Jacob, Phebe Lankester, Pauline Johnson, May Sinclair, Amy Levy, Edith Ellis, and Amy Wilson Carmichael."--BOOK JACKET.

Women Writers in the United States

Women Writers in the United States PDF Author: Cynthia J. Davis
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195090535
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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Book Description
Women Writers in the United States is a celebration of the many forms of work - written and social, tangible and intangible - produced by American women. Furthering their work in The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States, Davis and West document the variety and volume of women's work in the United States in a clear and accessible timeline format. They present information on the full spectrum of women's writing - including fiction, poetry, biography, political manifestos, essays, advice columns, and cookbooks - alongside a chronology of developments in social and cultural history that are especially pertinent to women's lives. This extensive chronology illustrates the diversity of women who have lived and written in the United States and creates a sense of the full trajectory of individual careers. A valuable and rich source of information on women's studies, literature, and history, Women Writers in the United States will enable readers to locate familiar and unfamiliar women's texts and to place them in the context out of which they emerged.

The History of Southern Women's Literature

The History of Southern Women's Literature PDF Author: Carolyn Perry
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807127537
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 724

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Book Description
Many of America’s foremost, and most beloved, authors are also southern and female: Mary Chesnut, Kate Chopin, Ellen Glasgow, Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, Harper Lee, Maya Angelou, Anne Tyler, Alice Walker, and Lee Smith, to name several. Designating a writer as “southern” if her work reflects the region’s grip on her life, Carolyn Perry and Mary Louise Weaks have produced an invaluable guide to the richly diverse and enduring tradition of southern women’s literature. Their comprehensive history—the first of its kind in a relatively young field—extends from the pioneer woman to the career woman, embracing black and white, poor and privileged, urban and Appalachian perspectives and experiences. The History of Southern Women’s Literature allows readers both to explore individual authors and to follow the developing arc of various genres across time. Conduct books and slave narratives; Civil War diaries and letters; the antebellum, postbellum, and modern novel; autobiography and memoirs; poetry; magazine and newspaper writing—these and more receive close attention. Over seventy contributors are represented here, and their essays discuss a wealth of women’s issues from four centuries: race, urbanization, and feminism; the myth of southern womanhood; preset images and assigned social roles—from the belle to the mammy—and real life behind the facade of meeting others’ expectations; poverty and the labor movement; responses to Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the influence of Gone with the Wind. The history of southern women’s literature tells, ultimately, the story of the search for freedom within an “insidious tradition,” to quote Ellen Glasgow. This teeming volume validates the deep contributions and pleasures of an impressive body of writing and marks a major achievement in women’s and literary studies.

The Cambridge History of Latin American Women's Literature

The Cambridge History of Latin American Women's Literature PDF Author: Ileana Rodríguez
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 131641910X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
The Cambridge History of Latin American Women's Literature is an essential resource for anyone interested in the development of women's writing in Latin America. Ambitious in scope, it explores women's literature from ancient indigenous cultures to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Organized chronologically and written by a host of leading scholars, this History offers an array of approaches that contribute to current dialogues about translation, literary genres, oral and written cultures, and the complex relationship between literature and the political sphere. Covering subjects from cronistas in Colonial Latin America and nation-building to feminicide and literature of the indigenous elite, this History traces the development of a literary tradition while remaining grounded in contemporary scholarship. The Cambridge History of Latin American Women's Literature will not only engage readers in ongoing debates but also serve as a definitive reference for years to come.

The Cambridge History of American Women's Literature

The Cambridge History of American Women's Literature PDF Author: Dale M. Bauer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108748339
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 712

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Book Description
The field of American women's writing is one characterized by innovation: scholars are discovering new authors and works, as well as new ways of historicizing this literature, rethinking contexts, categories and juxtapositions. Now, after three decades of scholarly investigation and innovation, the rich complexity and diversity of American literature written by women can be seen with a new coherence and subtlety. Dedicated to this expanding heterogeneity, The Cambridge History of American Women's Literature develops and challenges historical, cultural, theoretical, even polemical methods, all of which will advance the future study of American women writers - from Native Americans to postmodern communities, from individual careers to communities of writers and readers. This volume immerses readers in a new dialogue about the range and depth of women's literature in the United States and allows them to trace the ever-evolving shape of the field.

Women in the Literary Landscape

Women in the Literary Landscape PDF Author: Doris Weatherford
Publisher: C&r Press
ISBN: 9781936196821
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Literary Nonfiction. Women's Studies. From colonial times, women have been at the forefront of significant developments in the literary community and the book world. Despite this important history, no single publication has provided an overview of women's roles in writing, publishing, bookselling, and librarianship. With WOMEN IN THE LITERARY LANDSCAPE, in honor of its Centennial, the WNBA breaks new ground with a narrative connecting women's contributions in these fields with the relevant social history.

Feminism and American Literary History

Feminism and American Literary History PDF Author: Nina Baym
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813518558
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
For more than a decade Nina Baym has pioneered in the reexamination of American literature. She has led the way in questioning assumptions about American literary history, in critiquing the standard canon of works we read and teach, and in rediscovering lost texts by American women writers. Feminism and American Literary History collects fourteen of her most important essays published since 1980, which, combining feminist perspectives with original archival research, significantly revise standard American literary history. In Part I, "Rewriting Old American Literary History," the focus is on male writers. Essays range from close readings of individual works to ambitious critiques of the main paradigms by which scholars have conventionally linked disparate texts and authors in a narrative of nationalist literary history: the self-in-the-wilderness myth, the romance-novel distinction, the myth of New England origins. Part II, "Writing New American Literary History," studies examples of women's writing from the Revolution through the Civil War. Stressing much overtly public and political writing that has been overlooked even by feminist scholars, noting public and political themes in supposedly domestic works, the essays substantially modify and historicize the paradigm by which premodern American women's writing is currently understood. The contentious and influential essays in Part III, "Two Feminist Polemics," address feminist literary theory and pedagogy, advocating a pluralist practice as the basis for scholarship, criticism, and humane feminism. No one interested in American literature or in women's writing can afford to ignore Baym's revisionist work. Humorous and gracefully written, this book is enjoyable and indispensable.

A History of Feminist Literary Criticism

A History of Feminist Literary Criticism PDF Author: Gill Plain
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781139465823
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
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.

The Political Work of Northern Women Writers and the Civil War, 1850-1872

The Political Work of Northern Women Writers and the Civil War, 1850-1872 PDF Author: Lyde Cullen Sizer
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807860980
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
This volume explores the lives and works of nine Northern women who wrote during the Civil War period, examining the ways in which, through their writing, they engaged in the national debates of the time. Lyde Sizer shows that from the 1850 publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin through Reconstruction, these women, as well as a larger mosaic of lesser-known writers, used their mainstream writings publicly to make sense of war, womanhood, Union, slavery, republicanism, heroism, and death. Among the authors discussed are Lydia Maria Child, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sara Willis Parton (Fanny Fern), Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Mary Abigail Dodge (Gail Hamilton), Louisa May Alcott, Rebecca Harding Davis, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. Although direct political or partisan power was denied to women, these writers actively participated in discussions of national issues through their sentimental novels, short stories, essays, poetry, and letters to the editor. Sizer pays close attention to how these mostly middle-class women attempted to create a "rhetoric of unity," giving common purpose to women despite differences in class, race, and politics. This theme of unity was ultimately deployed to establish a white middle-class standard of womanhood, meant to exclude as well as include.