Literary Criticism : Women Authors

Essays on the roles played by women in forming American attitudes about benevolence and poverty relief.American culture has long had a conflicted relationship with assistance to the poor. Cotton Mather and John Winthrop were staunch proponents of Christian charity as fundamental to colonial American society, while transcendentalists harbored deep skepticism towards benevolence in favor of Emersonian self-reliance and Thoreau’s insistence on an ascetic life. Women in the 19th century, as these essays show, approached issues of benevolence far differently than their male counterparts, consistently promoting assistance to the impoverished, in both their acts and their writings. These essays address a wide range of subjects: images of the sentimental seamstress figure in women’s fiction; Rebecca Harding Davis’s rewriting of the “industrial” novel; Sarah Orne Jewett’s place in the transcendental tradition of skepticism toward charity, and her subversion of it; the genre of the poorhouse narrative; and the philanthropic work and writings of Hull House founder Jane Addams. As the editors of Our Sisters’ Keepers argue, the vulnerable and marginal positions occupied by many women in the 19th century fostered an empathetic sensitivity in them to the plight of the poor, and their ability to act and write in advocacy of the impoverished offered a form of empowerment not otherwise available to them. The result was the reformulation of the concept of the American individual. Jill Bergman is Associate Professor of English at the University of Montana. Debra Bernardi is Associate Professor of English at Carroll College.Contributors: Sarah E. Chinn, Monika Elbert, Lori Meerish, Terry D. Novak, James Salazar, Mary Templin, Karen Tracey, and Whitney A. Womack more...

Price: $22.36

Clarice Lispector is the premiere Latin American woman prose writer of this century, Suzanne Ruta noted in the New York Times Book Review, "but because she is a woman and a Brazilian, she has remained virtually unknown in the United States." Passionate Fictions provides American readers with a critical introduction to this remarkable writer and offers those who already know Lispector's fiction a deeper understanding of its complex workings. more...

Price: $57.00

This groundbreaking volume highlights the work of contemporary women writing in French whose cultural links, ethnic identities, and historical roots lie outside France. The writings of these women emanate from the cultures of Africa and the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and Quebec and other French-speaking regions of Canada. more...

Price: $108.00

With a grounding in the current theoretical understanding of Renaissance feminism, this work presents an examination of Francisco Delicado’s profeminist position in the context of what are currently described as individualist and relational models. The individualist model proposes an autonomy of women in relation to men, law and politics, while the relational explores what women are and do in contrast to men. Delicado’s text offers the possibility of invoking both models simultaneously. more...

Price: $69.95

The foremost French feminist literary critic pays homage to the premiere Latin American woman prose writer of this century. more...

Price: $58.50