This introduction to feminist literary criticism in its international contexts discusses a broad range of complex critical writings and then identifies and explains the main developments and debates within each approach. Each chapter has an easy-to-use format, comprising an introductory overview, an explanation of key themes and techniques, a detailed account of the work of specific critics, and a summary which includes critiques of the approach. Each chapter is accompanied by a guide to the primary texts and further reading.

Unsurpassed as a text for upper-division and beginning graduate students, Raman Selden's classic text is the liveliest, most readable and most reliable guide to contemporary literary theory. Includes applications of theory, cross-referenced to Selden's companion volume, Practicing Theory and Reading Literature.

Unsurpassed as a text for upper-division and beginning graduate students, Raman Selden's classic text is the liveliest, most readable and most reliable guide to contemporary literary theory. Includes applications of theory, cross-referenced to Selden's companion volume, Practicing Theory and Reading Literature.

Poststructuralism. Deconstruction. Gayatri Spivak. Postmodernism. Alice Jardine. Meaghan Morris. Rachel Blau DuPlessis -- 7. Black feminisms: the African diaspora. Afra-American feminist criticism. Barbara Smith. Audre Lorde. Alice Walker. Barbara Christian. Summary: Afra-American. African feminist criticism. Molara Ogundipe-Leslie. Carole Boyce Davies and Anne Adams Graves. Lauretta Ngcobo. Caribbean feminist criticism -- 8. Lesbian feminist criticism. Essentialism and construction. Modernism. Bonnie Zimmerman. Queer theory and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Jane Rule. Catharine Stimpson. Mary Daly. Adrienne Rich. Problematising of heterosexuality -- 9. Third World feminist criticism: third wave and fifth gear. Areas. Techniques. Chandra Talpade Mohanty and colonial discourse. Rosario Castellanos. Gloria Anzaldua. Rey Chow -- 10. Feminist futures.

This major textbook for women's studies provides an excellent and wide-ranging introduction to feminist ideas and perspectives on issues such as the family, sexuality, work, education, patriarchy, race, language, culture and representation. It brings together over seventy key excerpts.

Critical Theory Today is the essential introduction to contemporary criticial theory. It provides clear, simple explanations and concrete examples of complex concepts, making a wide variety of commonly used critical theories accessible to novices without sacrificing any theoretical rigor or thoroughness. This new edition provides in-depth coverage of the most common approaches to literary analysis today: feminism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, reader-response theory, new criticism, structuralism and semiotics, deconstruction, new historicism, cultural criticism, lesbian/gay/queer theory, African American criticism, and postcolonial criticism. The chapters provide an extended explanation of each theory, using examples from everyday life, popular culture, and literary texts; a list of specific questions critics who use that theory ask about literary texts; an interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby through the lens of each theory; a list of questions for further practice to guide readers in applying each theory to different literary works; and a bibliography of primary and secondary works for further reading.

"Everything you might want to know about the history and practice of feminist criticism in North America". -Feminist Bookstore News

Feminism has transformed the academic study of literature, fundamentally altering the canon of what is taught and setting new agendas for literary analysis. In this authoritative history of feminist literary criticism, leading scholars chart the development of the practice from the Middle Ages to the present. The first section of the book explores protofeminist thought from the Middle Ages onwards, and analyses the work of pioneers such as Wollstonecraft and Woolf. The second section examines the rise of second-wave feminism and maps its interventions across the twentieth century. A final section examines the impact of postmodernism on feminist thought and practice. This book offers a comprehensive guide to the history and development of feminist literary criticism and a lively reassessment of the main issues and authors in the field. It is essential reading for all students and scholars of feminist writing and literary criticism.