Words Not Swords : Iranian Women Writers and the Freedom of Movement / Farzaneh Milani.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Milani, Farzaneh.

Series:

Gender, culture, and politics in the Middle East.

Gender, culture, and politics in the Middle East

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Feminism and literature--Iran.

Feminism and literature.

Women and literature--Iran.

Women and literature.

Women in motion pictures.

Women in literature.

Social control in literature.

Purdah in literature.

Muslim women in literature.

Women authors, Iranian.

Persian literature--History and criticism.

Persian literature.

Persian literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxiv, 345 pages)

Edition:

First edition

Other Title:

Iranian Women Writers and the Freedom of Movement

Place of Publication:

Syracuse, New York : Syracuse University Press, [2011]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

A woman not only needs a room of her own, as Virginia Woolf wrote, but also the freedom to leave it and return to it at will; for a room without that right becomes a prison cell. The privilege of self-directed movement, the power to pick up and go as one pleases, has not been a traditional "right" of Iranian women. This prerogative has been denied them in the name of piety, anatomy, chastity, class, safety, and even beauty. It is only during the last 160 years that the spell has been broken and Iranian women have emerged as a moderating, modernizing force. Women writers have been at the forefront of this desegregating movement and renegotiation of boundaries. Words, Not Swords explores the legacy of sex segregation and its manifestations in Iranian literature and film and in notions of beauty and the erotics of passivity. Milani expands her argument beyond Iranian culture, arguing that freedom of movement is a theme that crosses frontiers and dissolves conventional distinctions of geography, history, and religion. She makes bold connections between veiling and foot binding, between Cinderella and Barbie, between the figures of the female Gypsy and the witch. In so doing, she challenges cultural hierarchies that divert attention from key issues in the control of women across the globe.

Contents:

Introduction: keeping women in their place

A legacy of containment

Enclosed bodies, trapped voices, framed images: the poetics of sex segregation

The bonds of beauty: immobilizing the ideal woman in Iranian literature

Pardeh Neshin, or "she who sits behind the screen": the spatial politics of Iranian cinema

Wings and words

Badasht and Seneca Falls: Taririh Qurratulayn and Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Icarus reborn: captivity and flight in the work of Forugh Farrokhzad

The gypsy poet: fluidity and flux in the poetry of Simin Behbahani

Women on the road: Shahrnush Parsipur and the conference of female birds

Prisoners awaiting liberation

Reading and misreading Iranian women in the United States: on abducted daughters, incarcerated girls, and invisible women

Epilogue: words as ambassadors of peace and beacons of hope.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Milani, Farzaneh. Words, not swords.

ISBN:

9780815651604

0815651600

OCLC:

759924628