Book Description

This innovative collection of contemporary essays in feminist literary criticism provides a spectrum of approaches and positions, united by their common focus on writing by and about women. Spanning the novel, poetry, drama, film and criticism, the contributors emphasise some of the problems of theory and practice posed by writing as a woman and by women’s representation in literature. The subjects of individual essays range from the nineteenth and twentieth century novel to avant-garde film, and from Victorian women poets to Russian women poets of today. Drawing on disciplines as diverse as structuralism, psychoanalysis, semiotics, socio-linguistics and Marxist analyses of literature, the essays suggest the variety and vigour of contemporary feminist literary criticism, as well as representing some of the debates currently animating it. Topics of common concern range from the nature of a women’s tradition in literature to the scope and method of feminist literary criticism itself. Successfully bridging the gap between literary criticism and literary production, the scope of this collection will be of considerable interest to those concerned with current developments in literary criticism as well as to those in the field of women’s studies.