Overview

In this rewarding book, Laurie A. Finke challenges assumptions about gender, the self, and the text which underlie fundamental constructs of contemporary feminist theory. She maintains that some of the key concepts structuring feminist literary criticism need to be reexamined within both their historical context and the larger framework of current theory concerning language, representation, subjectivity, and value.

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9781501727818

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This remarkable book argues for what the author calls a 'feminist theory of complexity, ' which offers a dialogical materialism capable of explaining how traditionally marginalized women writers challenge established notions of literature and criticism; a way out of the impasse between Anglo-American feminists' emphasis on 'female oppression, ' 'women's experience, ' 'women's languages, ' on one hand, and the political paralysis often attributed to Continental poststructuralist theory, on the other; and a dismantling of established literary periodization by treating medieval literary texts alongside modern ones. --E. Jane Burns Speculum

This remarkable book argues for what the author calls a `feminist theory of complexity,' which offers a dialogical materialism capable of explaining how traditionally marginalized women writers challenge established notions of literature and criticism; a way out of the impasse between Anglo-American feminists' emphasis on `female oppression,' `women's experience,' `women's languages,' on one hand, and the political paralysis often attributed to Continental poststructuralist theory, on the other; and a dismantling of established literary periodization by treating medieval literary texts alongside modern ones. -- E. Jane Burns * Speculum *

Author Information

Laurie A. Finke is Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Kenyon College. She is the coeditor of Medieval Texts and Contemporary Readers, also from Cornell University Press, author of Women’s Writing in English: The Middle Ages, and coauthor of King Arthur and the Myth of History.

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