Book Description

Genre and gender share not only a common etymology but also a joint history of misreading, which ranges from their being completely ignored on the one hand to their being cast into unbreakable stereotypes on the other. Mary Gerhart's Genre Choices, Gender Questions opens these two concepts to inquiry and locates their changing relationships at the center of critical interpretation. Gerhart demonstrates that a theory of genre must move beyond mere categorizing. She summarizes the significant stages in the history of thinking about genre from Plato to Derrida and proposes a new role for genre that makes it pivotal in current discussions of critical theory. Developing a model of genre that is epistemological, historical, theoretical, and praxis oriented, she tests it in relation to such fields as religious studies, speech-act theory, cultural studies, and biblical hermeneutics, but above all by applying it to the interpretation of narrative fiction and film. Genre Choices, Gender Questions explores the complex and ambiguous relationship between genre and gender. Drawing on recent developments in gender studies, Gerhart examines the fluid relationship between the changing status of women authors in such genres as courtly love poetry, the novel, and biblical narrative and the legitimation or devaluation of those genres. Genre Choices, Gender Questions deals lucidly with complex concepts. focus is never narrow, but opens out consistently toward ancillary issues such as feminist readings and deconstructionism, which strengthen the author's argument. Gerhart convincingly suggests the profound implications of genre and gender, as she redefines them, for both literary criticism and religious studies. Genre Choices, Gender Questions is volume 9 of the Oklahoma Project for Discourse and Theory.