The wicked sisters : women poets, literary history, and discord / Betsy Erkkila.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Erkkila, Betsy, 1944- author.

Series:

Oxford scholarship online.

Oxford scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American poetry--Women authors--History and criticism--Theory, etc.

American poetry.

English poetry--Women authors--History and criticism--Theory, etc.

English poetry.

Feminist poetry, American--History and criticism.

Feminist poetry, American.

Feminist poetry, English--History and criticism.

Feminist poetry, English.

Feminism and literature--English-speaking countries.

Feminism and literature.

Women and literature--English-speaking countries.

Women and literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (294 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 2023.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This provocative study of the lives and works of Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Adrienne Rich, and Gwendolyn Brooks focuses on the historical struggles and differences among and within women writers and among feminists themselves. Erkkila explores the troubled relations women writers experienced with both masculine and feminine literary cultures, arguing that popular feminist views often romanticize and maternalize women writers and their interrelations in ways that effectively reinforce the very gender stereotypes and polarities which initially grounded women's oppression. Studying the multiple race, class, ethnic, cultural, and other locations of women within a particular social field, Erkkila offers a revisionary model of women's literary history that challenges recent feminist theory and practice along with many of our fundamental assumptions about the woman writer, women's writing, and women's literary history. In contrast to the tendency of earlier feminists to heroize literary foremothers and communities of women, Erkkila focuses on the historical struggles and conflicts that make up the history of women poets. Without discounting the historical power of sisterhood, she seeks to reclaim women's literary history as a site of contention, contingency, and ongoing struggle, rather than a separate space of untroubled and essentially cooperative accord among women. Encompassing the various historical significations of "wickedness" as destructive, powerful, playful, witty, mischievous, and not righteous, The Wicked Sisters explores the power struggles and discord that mark both the history of women poets and the history of feminist criticism.

Contents:

Contents; Illustrations; 1. Rethinking Women's Literary History; 2. Emily Dickinson and the Wicked Sisters; The Magic Circle; ""Satan, or Sue""; Sisterhood and Difference; Placing Dickinson in History; 3. Dickinson, Women Writers, and the Marketplace; Literary Sisterhood: The Brontë Sisters; ""Tomes of Solid Witchcraft"": Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Superior Women: George Eliot; Going to Market: Helen Hunt Jackson; 4. Differences That Kill: Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore; Gender and Modernism; The Dynamics of Influence; ""Can't They See How Different It Is?""; Witchcraft

""Driving to the Interior""""You Are an Elizabeth""; 5. Adrienne Rich, Emily Dickinson, and the Limits of Sisterhood; Breaking the Mold; Feminism and Poetry; Lesbian Feminist Politics and Poetics; Dickinson as Other; ""What Chou Mean WE, White Girl?""; 6. Race, Black Women Writing, and Gwendolyn Brooks; Making Herself a Tradition; Black Blueswomen; Poetry and Black Motherhood; Words as Weapons; Black Power; ""There Will Be Differences""; ""Who Said It Was Simple""; Notes; Bibliography; Index; A; B; C; D; E; F; G; H; I; J; K; L; M; N; O; P; Q; R; S; T; U; V; W; Y

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 1992.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [245]-259) and index.

Derived record based on print version record and publisher information.

ISBN:

0-19-772684-4

1-280-44125-9

0-19-534495-2

1-4237-6460-9

1-60256-614-3

OCLC:

437173428