Women, Gender, and Church History

Abstract

As befits an article encouraging reflection, I would like to start with a personal anecdote. I recently heard a paper by a prominent literary scholar, which I thought would be an analysis of his encounter with a text. (I am familiar enough with current literary analysis to know that it would certainly not be an analysis of a text.) It turned out instead to be purely autobiographical. In talking about this later with a friend of mine from the Italian department, he told me that this was a new trend. As he put it: “We used to do Dante's life and works, then with New Criticism we did ‘the work,’ then with New Historicism we did Dante's works in their historical location, then with post-structuralism we did Dante and me, and now we just do me.’