Linda Alcoff says concisely, "For many contemporary feminist
theorists, the concept of a woman is a problem"
("Cultural
Feminism Versus Post-Structuralism," The Second Wave,
ed. L. Nicholson [Routledge, 1997], p. 330). How does Irigaray define
gender? Is that definition essential to the practice of criticism?
How does gender relate
to literary discourse? What do you make of Gilbert and Gubar's claim
that "verse genres have been even more thoroughly male than
fictional ones"? How are genres gendered? Do we distinguish
betweens a gendered means of production and a gendered text?
Consider the roles of
the Muse (Plath's Daddy?), figurative language, sentiment and rationaltiy,
knowledge as women's knowledge, representation, power, and
the means of literary production.
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