Intro Lecture
Intro Lecture Monday, September 12, 2011 11:38 AM
- Complements ENGB50 - Looking at how women's writers discuss female liberation - Look at things other than the novel ○ A lot of short fiction, poetry and plays How did women writers in the 20th cent and into the 21st use genre to articulate ideas about genre and express concerns about women's lives How do the gender genres Midterm - Show off literary critique techniques - Dealing with poems Essay - Topics will be assigned end of October/ early November - Close reading + argument Exam - Short answer questions - looking for discrete, very focused answers, very specific questions - 1890s: short stories becomes its own genre ○ It was the short story which was the most crucial term for women - Femitizing speaking, talking, trying to write while being silenced - Poetry ○ Adrean Rich - one of the most important 20th cent writers Engages with what women write about and why they write about it Culture and Anarchy - responds to Walkers essay ○ Muse - the traditional mode of use was for a male poet to use a female muse, but gender swapping and women looking for inspiration in men or other avenues - Churchill - witch craft in the 17th century ○ Witch craft was used as a scapegoat for society to silence women who were looking for liberation and power Historical phenomenon that Churchill exploits - Flur - at the end of the anthology, which takes on magic and women's power
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Gynocriticism Elaine Showalter, "Towards a Feminist Aesthetics" (1979) VS "feminist critique" of men's writing Once we start to talk about women's writing itself we are basically doing what critics in the 1970s caled gynocriticism A move forward from feminist critique Late 1970s/ early 1980s were very "women heavy" but big gaping holes in the canons of women's writings in other genres Thos who were interested in women's writing looked towards men's writing New kind of focus; history, themes, genres and structures of literature by women 1979 it was a newly visible world ○ Fairly recent and hard new history to accept this criticism Brought out writing from the middle ages and medieval literature
Literature of Their Own (1977) - "feminine" 1840 -80 (imitation) - "feminist" 1880 - 1920 (protest) ○ Questioning standards, and advocating female autonomy - "female " 1920 + (self-discovery) -
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Three stages
Problems of gender and genre Simone de Beauvoir: "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman" ( The Second Sex) Gender is a cultural construction; there is no transcendent essence to "femininity" Somewhat of an issue that female writers try to take on the positionality of the entire sex, rather than just one perspective ○ Many have come from post-colonial backgrounds Postcolonial and African-American feminism Women are not a homogenous group Gender intersects with other modalities of identity Differences between women are as important as differences between men and women Poststructuralist feminism Mary Jacobus: "not the sexuality of a text, but the textuality of sex" ("Reading Woman") Language (and women's writing) constructs and produces gender Binary opposition between men and women is cultural, not natural ○ Men are the centre and the norm ○ Women are deviant and abhorrent ○ We can see that produced in literature Words mean different things to different people, and in women's lit they are slightly "cagey" and
C. de Souza ENGB51H3 Page 1
** The Awakening ** Gilman ** Reading women - Jacobus
obscure ○ Naïve to think that literature is this revolutionary mirror ○ Look at how the texts begin to construct gender - Biofeminism - French Feminism
- Collings "shifting the centre" and Brooks' poems - depressing but very powerful - Bridget Jones's Diary ○ The love romance is still one of the more popular forms of literature for women
C. de Souza ENGB51H3 Page 2
- Complements ENGB50 - Looking at how women's writers discuss female liberation - Look at things other than the novel ○ A lot of short fiction, poetry and plays How did women writers in the 20th cent and into the 21st use genre to articulate ideas about genre and express concerns about women's lives How do the gender genres Midterm - Show off literary critique techniques - Dealing with poems Essay - Topics will be assigned end of October/ early November - Close reading + argument Exam - Short answer questions - looking for discrete, very focused answers, very specific questions - 1890s: short stories becomes its own genre ○ It was the short story which was the most crucial term for women - Femitizing speaking, talking, trying to write while being silenced - Poetry ○ Adrean Rich - one of the most important 20th cent writers Engages with what women write about and why they write about it Culture and Anarchy - responds to Walkers essay ○ Muse - the traditional mode of use was for a male poet to use a female muse, but gender swapping and women looking for inspiration in men or other avenues - Churchill - witch craft in the 17th century ○ Witch craft was used as a scapegoat for society to silence women who were looking for liberation and power Historical phenomenon that Churchill exploits - Flur - at the end of the anthology, which takes on magic and women's power
-
-
Gynocriticism Elaine Showalter, "Towards a Feminist Aesthetics" (1979) VS "feminist critique" of men's writing Once we start to talk about women's writing itself we are basically doing what critics in the 1970s caled gynocriticism A move forward from feminist critique Late 1970s/ early 1980s were very "women heavy" but big gaping holes in the canons of women's writings in other genres Thos who were interested in women's writing looked towards men's writing New kind of focus; history, themes, genres and structures of literature by women 1979 it was a newly visible world ○ Fairly recent and hard new history to accept this criticism Brought out writing from the middle ages and medieval literature
Literature of Their Own (1977) - "feminine" 1840 -80 (imitation) - "feminist" 1880 - 1920 (protest) ○ Questioning standards, and advocating female autonomy - "female " 1920 + (self-discovery) -
-
-
Three stages
Problems of gender and genre Simone de Beauvoir: "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman" ( The Second Sex) Gender is a cultural construction; there is no transcendent essence to "femininity" Somewhat of an issue that female writers try to take on the positionality of the entire sex, rather than just one perspective ○ Many have come from post-colonial backgrounds Postcolonial and African-American feminism Women are not a homogenous group Gender intersects with other modalities of identity Differences between women are as important as differences between men and women Poststructuralist feminism Mary Jacobus: "not the sexuality of a text, but the textuality of sex" ("Reading Woman") Language (and women's writing) constructs and produces gender Binary opposition between men and women is cultural, not natural ○ Men are the centre and the norm ○ Women are deviant and abhorrent ○ We can see that produced in literature Words mean different things to different people, and in women's lit they are slightly "cagey" and
C. de Souza ENGB51H3 Page 1
** The Awakening ** Gilman ** Reading women - Jacobus
obscure ○ Naïve to think that literature is this revolutionary mirror ○ Look at how the texts begin to construct gender - Biofeminism - French Feminism
- Collings "shifting the centre" and Brooks' poems - depressing but very powerful - Bridget Jones's Diary ○ The love romance is still one of the more popular forms of literature for women
C. de Souza ENGB51H3 Page 2
