Literature in context

(1700-1900)

The Restoration (1660-1713)

Augustan to Gothic (1713-1789)
The Romantic Age (1789-1832)
The Victorian Period (1832-1900)

Twentieth century (1900-2000)

World War I (1914-1918)
Between the wars: economic depression,the rise
of dictatorship
World War II (1939-1945)
The post-war world: decolonization
The Cold-War (1947-1991)
Information and communication technology
Globalization, terrorism, global warming

Literary Movements

The Augustans (late 1600s-1750)

The Gothic Novel (1764-1810)
The Romantic Movement (1780s-1830s)
The Social Novel (1830s-1900)
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood(1848-1860s)
The Aesthetic Movement (1880s-90s)

Introduction: Group discussion

Women writers had been traditionally
silenced and excluded from literary
history. Why? Think of possible reasons.
Why are there so few women writers in
textbooks and class material?

Possible answers
Biological reasons. Are women inferior to
men?
Education. Did men and women share the
same possibilities? Was education equal
for both?
Literary establishment controlled by white,
middle-class, heterosexual men.
Mainstream / minor literature

Discussion
Do men and women write differently?
Is there a female writing? Think of possible
adjectives to describe literature written by
women

Styles in writing (Quiller-Couch)

Masculine:
Bold, forceful, clear,
vigorous
Objective
Universal ,accurate
depiction of society
Relevant, variety of
themes

Feminine:
Vague, weak,
tremulous, pastel
Subjective
Confessional
personal, neurotic
Domestic themes

Introduction:
Findig a Female Tradition
Assumption: Women have not reached the standard of
men. Nothing could be intellectually expected of
women.
Male-dominated tradition as reference point for
womens writing.
Existence of a inevitable difference between male and
female ways of perceiving the world.
Interest of feminist criticism (from 1970s):
To rediscover the lost work of women writers
To provide a context for contemporary women
writers

To write the history of a tradition among women

Introduction:
Women and Literary Production
Women writing: Traditionally letter-writing and diaries,
never for publication but aimed to family and friends.
Professional writers: works to be published and paid.
Main obstacle: androcentric literary establishment
Solutions: use of male pseudonyms (George Eliot,
George Sand), publication by themselves
To have A Room of Ones Own (V. Woolf)

Introduction:
Women and Literary Production
The act of writing: inner conflict between
Traditional female functions
The subversive function of the imagination

Discouragement upon the mind of the artist:

inequalities in the educational system, lack of privacy,
domestic obligations, restrictions of family and social
expectations

Introduction:
Women and Feminism
1882- The Married Womans Property Act (UK)
1918- Womens suffrage (not fully till 1928)
1960s
USA: Political agitations for civil rignts
France: Revolutionary fervour of intellectuals,
students, workers.

Introduction:
Feminist Literary Criticism
1960s- Feminist criticism: Rereading the
traditional canon of great literary texts
Challenging the canon:
Male critics constructed literary canons that
exclude women
Male writing as the norm/ female writing as
special case

Introduction:
Feminist and Literary Criticism

Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)

Mary Ellmann, Thinking about Women (1968)
Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (1969)
Ellen Moers, Literary Women (1976)
E. Showalter, A Literature of their Own (1977)
S. Gilbert and S. Gubar, The Madwoman in the
Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth
Century Imagination (1979)

Feminist literary criticism

Anglo-American

French

- Focus on strong institutional

critique
- Based on historical and social
aspects of womens oppression
- Field of literary criticism and
cultural studies

- Focus on female creativity and

textual production
- Not so concerned with social
aspects
- Encouragement of feminist
creative practice

Terminology (E. Showalter)

Feminine phase: from the appearance of
the male pseydonym in the 1840s to the
death of George Eliot in 1880. Imitative
Feminist phase: from 1880 to 1920, or
the winning of the vote. Protest
Female phase: from 1920 to the present.
Self-discovery