Mullins, Rebecca ENG234 Introduction to Women's Literature: Dictionaries and Quick Reference

This lively and controversial collection of essays sets out to theorize and practice a 'materialist-feminist' criticism of literature and culture. Such a criticism is based on the view that the material conditions in which men and women live are central to an understanding of culture and society. It emphasizes the relation of gender to other categories of analysis. The essays in the first part of the book examine race, ideology, and the literary canon and explore the ways in which other critical discourse, such as those of deconstruction and French feminism, might be useful to a feminist and materialist criticism. The second part of the book contains examples of such criticism in practice, with studies of individual works, writers and ideas.

This six-volume set brings together excerpts of critical commentary on the most significant authors in world literary history - from Dante Alighieri to Hans Christian Andersen, and from Jane Austen to Nadine Gordimer. Entries on over 225 major dramatists, poets, novelists, and essayists of all nationalities are arranged alphabetically. Special emphasis has been given to writers of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Contemporary Literary Criticism assembles critical responses to the writings of the world's most renowned novelists, poets, playwrights, short story writers, scriptwriters, and other creative writers and provides supplementary biographical context and bibliographic material to guide the reader to a greater understanding of the genres and creators.