Literature and the Development of Feminist Theory

Robin Truth Goodman

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781107126084
• eBook ISBN: 9781316435434
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism for Women Authors
• Index: Literature

Literature and the Development of Feminist Theory offers an insightful look at the development of feminist theory through a literary lens. Stressing the significance of feminism's origins in the European Enlightenment, this book traces the literary careers of feminism's major thinkers in order to elucidate the connection of feminist theoretical production to literary work. In addition to considering such well-known authors as Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Simone de Beauvoir and Hélène Cixous, this book also reflects on the lasting influence of postcolonialism, liberalism, and specific genres such as science fiction and modernist poetry. Written by leading scholars and focusing on the literary trajectories of feminism's noted contributors, Literature and the Development of Feminist Theory ultimately provides a new perspective on feminism's theoretical context, bringing into view the effects of literary form on the growth of feminist thought.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Table of contents
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 “Original Spirit”: Literary Translations and Translational Literature in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft
• 3 Jane Eyre, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and the Varieties of Nineteenth-century Feminism
• 4 Progressive Portraits: Literature in Feminisms of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Olive Schreiner
• 5 Feminist Poetics: First-Wave Feminism, Theory, and Modernist Women Poets
• 6 Woolf and Women’s Work: Literary Invention in an Obscure Hat Factory
• 7 Walking in a Man’s World: Myth, Literature, and the Interpretation of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex
• 8 Decapitation Impossible: The Hundred Heads of Julia Kristeva
• 9 Shattering the Gender Walls: Monique Wittig’s Contribution to Literature
• 10 Hélène Cixous: Writing for Her Life
• 11 Subversive Creatures from behind the Iron Curtain: Irmtraud Morgner’s...
• 12 Christa Wolf: Literature as an Aesthetics of Resistance
• 13 Naked Came the Female Extraterrestrial Stranger: Applying...
• 14 Captive Maternal Love: Octavia Butler and Sci-Fi Family Values
• 15 More than Theater: Cherríe Moraga’s The Hungry Woman and the Feminist Phenomenology of Excess
• 16 Nawal el Saadawi: Writer and Revolutionary
• 17 “The Woman Who Said ‘No’”: Colonialism, Islam, and Feminist Resistance in the Works of Assia Djebar
• Notes
• Index