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Journal ArticleDOI

The Discourse Within: Feminism and Intradisciplinary Study

01 Jan 1989-Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory (The Johns Hopkins University Press)-Vol. 44, Iss: 4, pp 1-13
TL;DR: The authors argue that there is a relation between the structuring of the academic discipline of American literary studies and the way American literary texts are understood and valued, and they bring the history of feminist theory and scholarship to beat on a specific problem in literary studies, a problem symptomatic of a larger pattern in academic discourse.
Abstract: In this essay, I want to bring the history of feminist theory and scholarship to beat on a specific problem in literary studies, a problem symptomatic of a larger pattern in academic discourse. In particular, I will argue that there is a relation between the structuring of the academic discipline of American literary studies and the way American literary texts are understood and valued. Although feminism has become a part of academic discourse only in the last few decades, feminists have tried since theit initial entry into the academy to change its structure. From its inception, feminist study has been interdisciplinary. The 1976 inaugural issue of Signs, for example, states that its first purpose "is to publish the new scholarship about women from both the United States and other countries" (Stimpson, et al. ?). Having defined this comparativist task, the editors continue, "Signs has a second purpose as well: to be interdisciplinary" (v). Women's histories, literature, culture, and lives had fallen between the cracks of traditional academic disciplines; interdisciplinary study would allow scholars to recapture them. In addition, an interdisciplinary perspective would foster new attention to, and critical evaluation of, the methodologies employed by various disciplines. This critique of methodology proved especially important in the humanities where the very use of method was often unacknowledged. The results of the feminist call for a broad restructuring of traditional disciplines and approaches have been widespread. For example, the new literary history that has
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Kolodny examines the evidence of three generations of women's writing about the frontier and finds that, although the American frontiersman imagined the wilderness as virgin land, an unspoiled Eve to be taken, the pioneer woman at his side dreamed more modestly of a garden to be cultivated as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: To discover how women constructed their own mythology of the West, Kolodny examines the evidence of three generations of women's writing about the frontier. She finds that, although the American frontiersman imagined the wilderness as virgin land, an unspoiled Eve to be taken, the pioneer woman at his side dreamed more modestly of a garden to be cultivated. Both intellectual and cultural history, this volume continues Kolodny's study of frontier mythology begun in The Lay of the Land .

175 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article explored the origins of turn-of-the-century American antimodernism and found that the culture of the Arts and Crafts was not simple escapism, but reveals some enduring and recurring tensions in American culture.
Abstract: T. J. Jackson Lears draws on a wealth of primary sources -- sermons, diaries, letters -- as well as novels, poems, and essays to explore the origins of turn-of-the-century American antimodernism. He examines the retreat to the exotic, the pursuit of intense physical or spiritual experiences, and the search for cultural self-sufficiency through the Arts and Crafts movement. Lears argues that their antimodern impulse, more pervasive than historians have supposed, was not \"simple escapism,\" but reveals some enduring and recurring tensions in American culture.

50 citations

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Book
01 Jan 1976

9,739 citations

Book
01 Jan 1985
TL;DR: Elaine Scarry analyses the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of warfare and torture, and she demonstrates how political regimes use the power of physical pain to attack and break down the sufferer's sense of self.
Abstract: Part philosophical meditation, part cultural critique, this profoundly original work explores the nature of physical suffering. Elaine Scarry bases her study on a wide range of sources: literature and art, medical case histories, documents on torture compiled by Amnesty International, legal transcripts of personal injury trials, and military and strategic writings by such figures as Clausewitz, Churchill, Liddell Hart, and Henry Kissinger. Scarry begins with the fact of pain's inexpressibility. Not only is physical pain difficult to describe in words, it also actively destroys language, reducing sufferers in the most extreme cases to an inarticulate state of cries and moans. Scarry goes on to analyse the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of warfare and torture, and she demonstrates how political regimes use the power of physical pain to attack and break down the sufferer's sense of self. Finally she turns to examples of artistic and cultural activity; actions achieved in the face of pain and difficulty.

3,484 citations

Book
01 Jan 1984
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the works of many major 19th-century women writers and chart a tangible desire expressed for freedom from the restraints of a confining patriarchal society and trace a distinctive female literary tradition.
Abstract: In this work of feminist literary criticism the authors explore the works of many major 19th-century women writers. They chart a tangible desire expressed for freedom from the restraints of a confining patriarchal society and trace a distinctive female literary tradition.

1,360 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the works of many major 19th-century women writers and chart a tangible desire expressed for freedom from the restraints of a confining patriarchal society and trace a distinctive female literary tradition.
Abstract: In this work of feminist literary criticism the authors explore the works of many major 19th-century women writers. They chart a tangible desire expressed for freedom from the restraints of a confining patriarchal society and trace a distinctive female literary tradition.

833 citations

Book
01 Jan 1960
TL;DR: A retrospective article on Fiedler in the New York Times Book Review in 1965 referred to Love and Death in the American Novel as "one of the great, essential books on the American imagination...an accepted major work" as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: A retrospective article on Leslie Fiedler in the New York Times Book Review in 1965 referred to Love and Death in the American Novel as "one of the great, essential books on the American imagination...an accepted major work." This groundbreaking work views in depth both American literature and character from the time of the American Revolution to the present. From it, there emerges Fiedler's once scandalous--now increasingly accepted--judgment that our literature is incapable of dealing with adult sexuality and is pathologically obsessed with death.

641 citations