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First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
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.
This book examines the relationship between war and gender through the analysis of literary texts. Focusing on the fiction of Dorothy L. Sayers, Stevie Smith, Virginia Woolf, Naomi Mitchison and Elizabeth Bowen during the 1930s and 1940s, the book considers the different and sometimes contradictory ways in which British women writers responded both to the threat of war and to actual conflict in this period.
First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Although his film career extended from the early days of sound to the British New Wave and beyond, Sir John Mills is nonetheless remembered as the archetypal hero of the Second World War. Regarded as an English 'everyman', his performances crossed the class divide and, in his easy transition from below decks to above, he came to represent a newly democratic masculine ideal.But what was this exemplary masculinity and what became of it in the aftermath of war? John Mills and British Cinema asks how was it possible for an actor to embody national identity and, by exploring the cultural contexts in which Mills and the nation became synonymous, the book offers a new perspective on 40 years of cinema and social change. Through detailed analysis of a wide range of classic British films, John Mills and British Cinema exposes the shifting constructions of 'national' masculinity, arguing that the screen persona of the actor is a fundamental, and often overlooked, dimension of British cinema.
The essays collected in Posting the Male examine representations of masculinity in post-war and contemporary British literature, focussing on the works of writers as diverse as John Osborne, Joe Orton, James Kelman, Ian Rankin, Carol Ann Duffy, Alan Hollinghurst, Ian McEwan, Graham Swift and Jackie Kay. The collection seeks to capture the current historical moment of 'crisis', at which masculinity loses its universal transparency and becomes visible as a performative gender construct. Rather than denoting just one fixed, polarised point on a hierarchised axis of strictly segregated gender binaries, masculinity is revealed to oscillate within a virtually limitless spectrum of gender identities, characterised not by purity and self-containment but by difference and alterity. As the contributors demonstrate, rather than a gender 'in crisis' millennial manhood is a gender 'in transition'. Patriarchal strategies of man-making are gradually being replaced by less exclusionary patterns of self-identification inspired by feminism. Men have begun to recognise themselves as gendered beings and, as a result, masculinity has been set in motion.
What did war look like in the cultural imagination of 1914? Why did men in Scotland sign up to fight in unprecedented numbers? What were the martial myths shaping Scottish identity from the aftermath of Bannockburn to the close of the nineteenth century, and what did the Scottish soldiers of the First World War think they were fighting for? Scotland and the First World War: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Bannockburn is a collection of new interdisciplinary essays interrogating the trans-historical myths of nation, belonging and martial identity that shaped Scotland’s encounter with the First World War. In a series of thematically linked essays, experts from the fields of literature, history and cultural studies examine how Scotland remembers war, and how remembering war has shaped Scotland.
"Homeless queer kids - and they are legion - too often find themselves ostracized and silenced. In Zane Thimmesch-Gill they have finally found a strong, clear voice." --Riki Wilchins, author of Read My Lips, GenderQueer and Queer Theory, Gender Theory In the memoir, Hiding in Plain Sight, this transgendered author describes in graphic and harrowing detail a homeless teen life on the streets that was marked with constant violence. Amidst the daily struggle to survive, she slowly came to the realization that she hated her body just as much as everyone did. When she was honest with herself she'd always known that she was meant to be a boy. Despite the intense pressure of street life and having ...
How did social, cultural and political events concerning Britain during the 1940s reshape modern British fiction? During the Second World War and in its aftermath, British literature experienced and recorded drastic and decisive changes to old certainties. Moving from potential invasion and defeat to victory, the creation of the welfare state and a new Cold war threat, the pace of historical change seemed too rapid and monumental for writers to match. Consequently the 1940s were often side-lined in literary accounts as a dividing line between periods and styles. Drawing on more recent scholarship and research, this volume surveys and analyses this period's fascinating diversity, from novels ...