In this work I am going to present
the principal characteristics of Feminism, its influence on poetry, and the
most meaningful authors in this movement.
Firstly, we will see how Feminism
is defined:
Feminism is a diverse
collection of social theories, political movements, and moral philosophies,
largely motivated by or concerning the experiences of women. Most feminists are
especially concerned with social, political, and economic inequality between
men and women; some have argued that gendered and sexed identities, such as
"man" and "woman," are socially constructed. Feminists differ over the
sources of inequality, how to attain equality, and the extent to which gender
and sexual identities should be questioned and critiqued. Thus, as with any
ideology, political movement or philosophy, there is no single, universal form
of feminism that represents all feminists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism
Feminism is theory that men and women should be equal politically, economically and socially.
http://amazoncastle.com/feminism/ecocult.shtml
To speak of "Feminism" as
a theory is already a reduction. However, in terms of its theory feminism might
be categorized into three general groups:
Further, women (and men) needed to
consider what it meant to be a woman, to consider how much of what society has
often deemed inherently female traits, are culturally and socially constructed.
Simone de Beauvoir's study, The Second Sex, though perhaps flawed by
Beauvoir's own body politics, nevertheless served as a groundbreaking book of
feminism, that questioned the "othering" of women by western
philosophy. Early projects in feminist theory included resurrecting women's
literature that in many cases had never been considered seriously or had been
erased over time.
http://www.kristisiegel.com/theory.htm#feminism
Feminist
Criticism:
A criticism advocating equal rights for women
in a political, economic, social, psychological, personal, and aesthetic sense.
On the thematic level, the feminist reader should identify with female
characters and their concerns. The object is to provide a critique of
phallocentric assumptions and an analysis of patriarchal visions or ideologies
inscribed in a literature that is male-centered and male-dominated. Such a
reader denounces the outrageously phallic visions of writers such as D. H.
Lawrence, Henry Miller, and Norman Mailer, refusing to accept the cult of
masculine virility and superiority that reduces woman to a sex object, a second
sex, a submissive other. As Judith Fetterley puts it, "Feminist criticism
is a political act whose aim is not simply to interpret the world but to change
it by changing the consciousness of those who read and their relation to what
they read.
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/glossary/Feminist_criticism.html
On the ideological level, the reader seeks to learn not to accept the
hegemonic perspective of the male and refuses to be coopted by a gender-biased
criticism. Gender is largely a cultural construct, as are the stereotypes that
go along with it: that the male is active, dominating, and rational, whereas
the female is passive, submissive, and emotional. Gynocritics strive to define
a particularly feminine content and to extend the canon so that it might
include works by lesbians, feminists, and women writers in general. According
to Elaine Showalter, gynocriticism is concerned with "woman as the
producer of textual meaning, with the history, themes, genres, and structures
of literature by women. Its subjects include the psychodynamics of female
creativity; linguistics and the problem of a female language; the trajectory of
the individual or collective female literary career; literary history; and, of
course, studies of particular writers and works."
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/glossary/Feminist_criticism.html
On the deconstructionist
level, the aim is to dismantle and subvert the logocentric
assumptions of male discourse -- its valorization of being, meaning, truth,
reason, and logic, its metaphysics of presence. Logocentrism is phallocentric
(hence the neologism "phallogocentrism"); it systematically
privileges paternal over maternal power, the intelligible over the sensible.
Patriarchal authority demands unity of meaning and is obsessed with certainty
of origin. The French feminists in particular construe "woman" as any
radical force that subverts the concepts, assumptions, and structures of
traditional male discourse -- the realism, rationality, mastery, and explanation
that undergird it. By contrast, the American and British feminists mainly
engage in empirical and thematic studies of writings by and about women.
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/glossary/Feminist_criticism.html
Now we
will see the most meaningful authors in poetry that were considered feminists,
and a reference (titles of poems) to see it in their poetry.
This
survey of women's poetry seeks to distinguish between women's discourse and
that of men, focusing on the feminine consciousness in poetry, and feminine
attitudes in general, as contrasted to men's poetry. It is based on the premise
that women's poetry speaks a language different from that written by male
poets. It begins with the legacy of the nineteenth century handed down by poets
like Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning to
their twentieth-century counterparts. It involves a detailed study of poets
like Marianne Moore, Hilda Doolittle, Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton,
Gwendolyn Brooks and Audre Lorde, establishing links between their works and
attitudes.
http://www.salzburgseminar.org/ASC/csacl/progs/amlit/poetry.htm
Emily
Dickinson:
Elizabeth
Barrett Browning:
Christina Rossetti:
Sylvia
Plath: Plath's poems begin with a fairly conventional woman
protagonist living in the shadow of a male figure, but gradually there is a
change of persona. In the last few months of her life she presented a totally
different woman who is no longer docile but violent: a Fury raging for revenge.
"The Colossus"
Anne Sexton: In
Sexton's poems there is a strong focus on the female body. It is possible to
study her work in the light of French Feminist writers who feel that a woman
writes with her body.
http://www.salzburgseminar.org/ASC/csacl/progs/amlit/poetry.htm
In my
opinion, feminists are convinced of their ideas but publishing it they can
attract attention of people who read it and try to convince more people, they
are very proud of their feelings and thinks and to them does not exit another
way to think, if you are not with them, you are against them. Personally I
think that men and women are exactly equal in all aspects (evidently are not
physically) and all we have the same rights. To me does not exit distinction to
be so radical as they are. All we are the same: humans.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
INFORMATION:
-
The free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism
(23&24 May)
-
Feminism.
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/glossary/Feminist_criticism.html
Glossary
of Literary Theory by Greig E. Henderson and Christopher Brown
University
of Toronto English Library Director: Ian Lancashire.
-
Introduction to Modern
Litherary Theory
http://www.kristisiegel.com/theory.htm#feminism
(23&24 May)
Feminism
Kristi Siegel, siegelk@core.com
-
Feminism and the muse women’s poetry in the twentieth century
http://www.salzburgseminar.org/ASC/csacl/progs/amlit/poetry.htm
(23&24 May)
Zsuzsa Fulop and Manju Jaidka
-
Feminism Literary Criticism
and Theory
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism/lit.html
(23&24 May)
By the Center for Digital
Discourse and Culture at Virginia Tech Universit
Kristin Switala