Soft canons: American women writers and masculine tradition

Abstract

In spite of the recovery of numerous women writers and the reconceptualizations of American literature since the 1980s, literary criticism has been slow to bring 19th-century male and female writers, so-called masculine and feminine traditions, together in dialogue. Addressing these separate spheres of criticism, the 16 essays establish and complicate literary genealogies as they explore connections, discuss mutual influences, and propose theories of difference and alliance to create an account of the period. Rather than conceiving of men's and women's writing in opposition, this text expands one's understanding of direct relationships between male and female authors and outlines the poignant absence of such relationships where they might have been most expected. The European contributors consider ways in which race, gender, sexuality and region inflect authorship and reading; gender, politics and economics, especially the economics and politics of authorship, form another important matrix of concerns. At the same time, the book investigates the relationship between gender and aesthetics, and it challenges the traditional view that women writers often create merely political texts.