Reference:
Review Excerpts 'The purpose of this paper will be to explore, from an admittedly personal
and selective perspective, salient aspects of the feminist critical intertext as it
echoes in the present generation of principally North American critics working
with texts that may of may not be North American' (79).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | perspective |
purpose |
'Anthropologists looking at gender relations found that in every human
culture women are in some way subordinate to men' (81).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | culture | gender |
'More recently, historian, Gerda Lerner, broadens and further universalizes
this disconcerting yet undeniable assymetry [sic] between the sexes: "There is not
a single society known where women-as-a-group have decision-making power
over men or where they define the rules of sexual conduct or control marriage
exchanges" (Lerner, [1986,] Creation [of patriarchy:] 30)' (81).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | power | 'Historical scholars affirmed similar views, like this one by Gerda Lerner:
"...women live a duality -- as members of the general culture and as partakers of
women's culture" (Lerner, [1979,] [The] majority [finds its past:] 52)' (83).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | culture | 'Showalter replaced traditional literary periods with three stages in women's
literary history, stages marked by an increasing growth of feminist
consciousness: the first or feminine is characterized by an imitation of prevailing
modes of the dominant tradition; the second or feminist protests against these
standards and values and advocates minority rights and values; the female turns
inward toward a search for identity and self-discovery' (84).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | history | identity |
literary |
'Whatever we say or whatever we write ... will always be a part and parcel of
an ongoing discourse into which we insert ourselves at particular and varying
points. Our individual utterances can never be entirely encompassing, nor should
they be; neither can they be separate or detached' (89).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | discourse |
'Our best, indeed our only, option is to learn to hear wisdom through the
garble, and then hope to respond with sensitivity and boundless imagination'
(89-90).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | 'Since each one of us intersects with texts and their cultural contexts at subtly
different points, it is our responsibility, as critics, to assess the meaning of those
points of convergence.... The text will also make its own claims and demands. It,
too, occupies a space and partakes in a moment. We thus owe it to the text to
confront and assess its location with all the pertinent historical and cultural
information we can muster' (90).
Domains: Under construction |
'In opting ... for the ongoing, all-embracing process of opening up texts,
reading, and experience to as yet uncharted possibilities, we may break beyond
the boundaries of the oppressive, the intransigent, and most importantly, the
known' (90-1).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | reading |
Last Modified:
July-12-96 10:15:9
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