Womens Writing

c) Le cronache di Santa Cecilia. Un monastero femminile a Roma in età moderna, (n. 5 of the book series “La memoria restituita – Fonti per la storia delle donne”), Rome: Viella 2009.

The book includes the transcription of the Chronicles of the Monastery of St. Cecilia in Trastevere in Rome by Alessia Lirosi (pages 91-310) but also a wide essay by Alessia Lirosi (pages 31-90) and a Foreword by Professor Elena Brambilla of Università Statale di Milano (pages 9-29).

This paper explores the theme of madness in two short stories by women writers. Mental ailments like 'madness,' 'hysteria' and 'nervous condition' are readily associated with women. This paper aims to go beyond the actual illnesses and socially constructed definitions to investigate the implications of 'insanity' and the causes that lead to a woman being labelled 'mad.' While Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story "The Yellow Wallpaper" is written in the late nineteenth-century America, Pratibha Ray's story "The Eyes" is situated in Odisha in the late twentieth century. This paper would investigate the different yet related concerns that these two authors address.

The paper aims at studying Emily Dickinson as a confessional poet and the images of Death in her poetry which will mainly focus on the various possible theoretical explanations for her glorification and embracement of death as a “pleasure”. Through the varying descriptions of death, the paper explains the many types of death that individuals experience. The paper explores the manifested ideas of Christian after-life, Freudian concept of pleasure, homosexuality, the American Civil War are some of the aspects that give grounds to the Romanticisation of death in her poetry.

Scholars typically have difficulty defining and categorizing the works of Christine de Pisan, the first professional woman writer in Europe.  For some she is, foremost a poet, for others a historian, a philosopher, a prose writer, or a feminist – even a plagiarist.  Perhaps the inability of literary critics to claim Pisan as their own until recently may account for her scholarly neglect and lack of status in the literary canon; The Book of The City of Ladies (1405), first translated by Brian Anslay into English in 1521 as Boke of the Cyte of Ladyes was not again translated until 1982 by Earl Jeffrey Richards.  I would like to suggest, however, that the reasons scholars have been unable to adequately define Pisan's writing and specifically The City of Ladies is because they have overlooked the possibility that Pisan creates her own genre: the genre of feminist historical fiction.

Examines major works of Japanese women writers from Heian (ninth century) to contemporary writings. The course focuses on themes of self-expression, different genres, representations of gender, and what constitutes women's writing. We will particularly consider how those definitions change over time and were defined both by those who applied the term to others and to themselves. Readings include fiction, poetry, and essays, with the main emphasis on fictional writing.

F.E. (Effie) Crichton is a neglected Ulster novelist, praised by the Irish Times for writing as well as Somerville and Ross about her native Ulster. She was also the daughter of Unionist politician Thomas Sinclair. Tinker's Hollow (1912) is a story set in Victorian County Antrim. It was published at the height of the 'Ulster Crisis'; the editor's Introduction discusses her biography and how her work reflects the conflicted identities of her time.

Tills article discusses Nancy K. Miller's project of arachnology. Świerkosz presents Miller's reinterpretation of Arachne as a creative woman (rather than a spider) and of Athena, who (contrary to many feminist readings of the myth) also embodies a certain kind of feminine creativity. Thus Świerkosz questions the somatic model of writing that many critics (including G. Borkowska, A. Araszkiewicz, K. Kłosińska, H. Cixous, I. Irigaray J. Kristeva) view as the only authentic (and anti-phallogocentric) way for women to find expression in art. Building on scholarship on Maria Dabrowska's biography and work as a case study, Świerkosz shows that a narrow definition of womanhood impacts our reading, as does literary historians' tendency to ignore the ambivalent relationship between gender and literature.

An interview with Jean 'Binta' Breeze by Emily Zobel Marshall

Breeze’s poetry not only straddles the music industry and the literary establishment but also combines reflections on both inner-city life and the natural world. Breeze divides her time between urban London and rural Jamaica; and her latest collection, The Verandah Poems (2016), celebrates both the simplicities and intricacies of country life in Jamaica in an ode to watching the world go by from her verandah. Indeed, the verandah plays a pivotal role in black communities across the Americas. Traditionally, the verandah (or porch) is at the center of folk life and oral culture, and it serves as a space key to the health of the community. African-American author Zora Neale Hurston, whose work celebrates black folklore and culture in 1930s America, writes in Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) of the pivotal role the porch plays in the oral traditions and creative lives of the African-American community. Similarly to Breeze’s use of patois, Hurston goes to great lengths to capture the AfricanAmerican vernacular in her writing, and her “speakerly”1text emphasizes the centrality of the porch in the all-black town of Eatonville as a place where people can sit together, after a hard day of work, and share their stories: “When the people sat around on the porch and passed around the pictures of their thoughts for the others to look at and see, it was nice. The fact that the thought pictures were always crayon enlargements of life made it even nicer to listen to” (Hurston 60). Breeze explains that in Jamaica, unlike in England, life is lived outside, so people see and notice each other, pass the time of day, and exchange tales. From her Jamaican verandah, Breeze can observe passersby and involve herself in the community, but it’s also a safe and private space where people must be invited to enter it. In The Verandah Poems, Breeze invites the reader onto her verandah to observe the intricate lives of visitors and passersby, feel the intensity of the tropical afternoon heat, hear the stories exchanged at the end of the day, grapple with the ghosts of the past, and meditate on the changes that unfurl before her in modern Jamaica.

THE FACT AND FICTION IN THE PORTRAYAL OF FEMALE BODY: ANGELA CARTER’S NIGHTS AT THE CIRCUS AND JEANETTE WINTERSON’S SEXING THE CHERRY AND WRITTEN ON THE BODY

Novels Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter and Sexing the Cherry and Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson rely on common narrative tactics and deal with very similar subject matter. This paper contains a brief comparison of the three novels in terms of their stylistic qualities, focusing on Carter’s and Winterson’s combination of magic realism, the picaresque mode, mythology, and historiographic metafiction with Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of carnival and the grotesque body, with a common aim of unmasking the stereotypical socially constructed ideas regarding the female body. The two authors use the grotesque bodies of their heroines as a site of resistance to and carnivalesque overthrow of imposed social hierarchies.

U radu se komparativno promatraju elementi sustava slavenske, odnosno južnoslavenske mitologije (bajoslovlja) u studiji Stara vjera Srba i Hrvata, na glavnoj osnovi pjesama, priča i govora narodnog Natka Nodila, koja je izlazila u razdoblju između 1885. i 1890. godine u deset knjiga Rada Jugoslavenske akademije znanosti i umjetnosti, i u Pričama iz davnine Ivane Brlić- Mažuranić. Na temelju usporedbe motiva, likova i pojmova koji se kroz različite diskurzivne prakse mogu pronaći u oba teksta promatra se autoričin kreativni umjetnički postupak te njegova interpretacija u autorskim paratekstualnim primjerima. Složeni proces transformacije sastavnica usmenih kazivanja u sustav slavenske mitologije i dalju preobliku znanstvenih i stručnih diskurzivnih praksi u umjetničko stvaralaštvo Ivane Brlić– Mažuranić u radu će biti sagledani u kontekstu procesa remitologizacije koji je karakterističan za kulturne prakse 20. stoljeća. // This paper comparatively explores the elements of Proto-Slavic mythology in Nodilo’s study The Ancient Faith of the Serbs and the Croats (1885–1890) and in the Tales of Long Ago by Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić. Based on the comparison of motives, characters and terms that can be found throughout different discursive practices in both texts, the author’s creative artistic process and its interpretation in the author’s paratextual examples are observed. The complex process of transformation of components of oral poems in the system of Slavic mythology and the further transformation of scientific and professional discursive practices in the artistic texts are considered in the context of the process of remythologising in the cultural practices of the 20th century.

... Merrim herself compares and contrasts Sor Juana with Catalina de Erauso, Marıa de Zayas, Mme de Lafayette, Anne ... Teodor Wierszbowski, ed., Anny Memoraty, ''Dzwiewicy Polskiéj'', Lłacınskie Wiersze, z lat 1640Á1644 (Warsaw: K. Kowalewskiego, 1895) 17Á18, 13Á14. ...

Cette étude vise à présenter un panorama critique de la littérature catalane (poésie, nouvelle, roman, théâtre et essai) publiée par des écrivaines valenciennes pendant les vingt dernières années. Une attention particulière sera accordée aux dynamiques spécifiques développées dans ces coordonnées géochronologiques, et à l'influence des politiques culturelles soutenues par les gouvernements du Parti Populaire (1995-2015) et de la coalition Parti Socialiste- Compromís-Podem (depuis 2015) sur le milieu littéraire.

The immaterial spirits introduced in the middle of Cavendish’s Blazing World (1666) challenge the treatise’s vitalist materialistic epistemology.  I will examine what these entities symbolize, specifically in their focus on threes: there are questions concerning a threefold Cabala (168), “three degrees of inanimate sensitive and rational matter” (176), even a spiritual threesome (194).  I suggest these beings are metonymic of ideas conveyed through text and that, because the spirits appear in a treatise fundamentally concerned with governance and the production of power, they lend insight into an innovative textual sovereignty that Cavendish claims for herself.  I suggest Cavendish redefines early modern doctrines of the king’s two bodies to introduce a third term and thus reimagines sovereignty as a trinity or trifecta, a triangular dialectic of power between author, reader, and text.

is approach aims to open two lines of research on Alejandra Murguía (Santiago de Compostela 1859-A Coruña, 1937): her work as transmitter and compiler of oral tradition literature and her artistic career, short, filled with obstacles and drastically interrupted by the charges derived from their feminine condition. At the same time, it aims to be a vindication of her figure in the light of women's studies and a reflection on the hegemonic discourses of art and the history of literature, which often ignored and belittled female performances.

ESCRITORAS Y PERIODISTAS.-IV. LA OPINIÓN FEMENINA ANTE EL NUEVO ORDEN POLÍTICO Y EL DEBATE CONSTITUCIONAL.-1. Las claves del debate.-1.1. La libertad de imprenta.-1.2. La Inquisición.-1.3. La reforma de los regulares.-1.4. Ciudadanía, igualdad, libertad, independencia y soberanía.-1.5. Otros derechos y deberes: La presunción de inocencia, la separación de poderes… 2. Las fuentes y su asimilación. El horizonte intelectual de las escritoras.-V. EL PAPEL DE LA MUJER EN LA SOCIEDAD. VISIONES MASCULINAS ENCONTRADAS: EL AMIGO DE LAS DAMAS (1813) VS. EL TÍO TREMENDA (1814 Y 1823).-VI. A MODO DE CONCLUSIÓN PROVISIONAL.-VII. BIBLIOGRAFÍA

In the last decades, intertextuality has been used to question issues of gender identity and desire, and, in a lively dialogue with theoretical debates within feminist thought, has come to define women's writing. An early example of such intertextuality is the rewriting of the female subject in Angela Carter's spectacular novel Nights at the Circus (1984). Fevvers, the self-proclaimed bird woman found at the door of a brothel, hatched from an egg, raised by prostitutes, and trained by the witch-like anarchist Lizzie, wanders around the world, traversing alternative communities, ideologies, and the world of fiction, while exploring the feminine experience in relation to her indeterminate female body symbolized by her alleged wings and searching for a place and language for the new woman. The figure of the woman writer in confrontation with the literary heritage is ubiquitous in contemporary women's writing; a recent example is Kate Atkinson's Emotionally Weird , a postmodern novel that produces its new woman by rewriting and questioning the realist novel. Unlike most of their fictive predecessors in the realist novel, who begin as single women and end up in socially appropriate, acceptable heterosexual marriages, the female protagonists of postmodern fiction strive to break free of both their biological roots and the marriage institution and stage female experience in the discursive field. While exposing the inadequacy of traditional literary forms and their implicit gender norms, this figure of the woman writer in search of a language offers a viable, desirable form of female existence instead. 1 Sarah Waters's 2002 Fingersmith is another example of a novel whose playful discursive production of the woman writer illustrates the

Agua que no has de beber contiene diez cuentos que presentan diversos momentos de quiebre en la vida de sus personajes. A través de un lenguaje metafórico con el que se crea un imaginario preciso para cada historia, estos cuentos nos hablan de la forma fantástica o realista en que cada uno de los personajes enfrenta las rupturas y aprende a encontrase al otro lado del absurdo. "Mil y Una Noches", el cuento que concluye la colección, cierra esta búsqueda y explora el ejercicio de la escritura como una actividad indispensable, de vida o muerte. Se reconoce por fin que la escritura es tan solo una parte mínima de una realidad compleja que la excede y que quien escribe nunca la podrá controlar.

This article provides a feminist critique of representation, analysing the way sexual and racial others are represented in the work of the Afrikaans popular romantic fiction writer Sophia Kapp. Comparing her first three novels to the latest one, the article points to a development in her writing and tracks the changes it has undergone over the course of the almost ten years of Kapp's writing career. Starting off with exclusively white and heterosexual characters in her first novels, her latest novel includes a number of black and homosexual secondary characters. However, while these characters appear to be equal to the white hero and heroine, an analysis of their representation shows that they are rendered in such a way that they support the white heterosexual marriage as the unquestionable standard, and it becomes clear that the inclusion of sexual and racial others appears for the most part to be in the function of " surrogate and enabler " for the white heterosexual marriage ideal.

Between the Middle Ages and modern times there was in Castile a phenomenon of feminine prophetism with great public impact. Among its main exponents are two tertiaries, the Dominican Mary of Santo Domingo and the Franciscan Juana de la Cruz. Both women incarnated the word of God in a particular way. We will analyze the communication systems that these women used to be heard trying to evaluate the weight of orality and writing in a moment of change from an oral culture to a "civilization of writing" because some important aspects of its prophetic announcement are found here.
En la transición de la Edad Media a la Moderna se dio en Castilla un fenómeno de profetismo femenino con gran repercusión pública. Entre sus principales exponentes destacan dos terciarias, la dominica María de Santo Domingo y la franciscana Juana de la Cruz. Ambas encarnaron la palabra de Dios de forma peculiar. Analizamos aquí los sistemas comunicativos que emplearon para hacerse oír intentando valorar el peso de la oralidad y de la cultura escrita en el momento de cambio de una cultura oral a una “civilización del escrito” por entender que aquí radican algunos aspectos importantes de su anuncio profético.

... could protect the territories of the Country House-Man from the feminine reterritorialisation, among other ... in their behaviour before they appear in public than afterwards” (MP, p. 45). ... tensions the Park had been suppressing, of deregularising its lines, of reterritorialising the Park ...

The article focuses on Ernestyna Śniadowiczówna, the main character in a novel by Zofia Nałkowska, Węże i róże [Snakes and Roses] (1913). The main purpose of the work is to show that the character had its real counterpart in Zofia’s younger sister, the sculptor Hanna Nałkowska. The words of Zofia herself were crucial, who in her Diary confessed that all her novels were autobiographical to some extent. Still, researchers have not paid sufficient attention to the significant similarities between
Ernestyna and Hanna Nałkowska. Węże i róże is the only piece in the writer’s output in which she analyzed the issues related to art and pointed out some characteristics of the artist. Zofia was writing her novel when Hanna was entering the world of art. A comparison between Ernestyna Śniadowiczówna and Hanna Nałkowska, as well as the information from Zofia’s Dziennik and reminiscences of their friends show that the literary character is likely to be based on a real person.

This article provides a feminist critique of representation, analysing the way sexual and racial others are represented in the work of the Afrikaans popular romantic fiction writer Sophia Kapp. Comparing her first three novels to the latest one, the article points to a development in her writing and tracks the changes it has undergone over the course of the almost ten years of Kapp's writing career. Starting off with exclusively white and heterosexual characters in her first novels, her latest novel includes a number of black and homosexual secondary characters. However, while these characters appear to be equal to the white hero and heroine, an analysis of their representation shows that they are rendered in such a way that they support the white heterosexual marriage as the unquestionable standard, and it becomes clear that the inclusion of sexual and racial others appears for the most part to be in the function of "surrogate and enabler" for the white heterosexual m...

ESCRITORAS Y PERIODISTAS.-IV. LA OPINIÓN FEMENINA ANTE EL NUEVO ORDEN POLÍTICO Y EL DEBATE CONSTITUCIONAL.-1. Las claves del debate.-1.1. La libertad de imprenta.-1.2. La Inquisición.-1.3. La reforma de los regulares.-1.4. Ciudadanía, igualdad, libertad, independencia y soberanía.-1.5. Otros derechos y deberes: La presunción de inocencia, la separación de poderes… 2. Las fuentes y su asimilación. El horizonte intelectual de las escritoras.-V. EL PAPEL DE LA MUJER EN LA SOCIEDAD. VISIONES MASCULINAS ENCONTRADAS: EL AMIGO DE LAS DAMAS (1813) VS. EL TÍO TREMENDA (1814 Y 1823).-VI. A MODO DE CONCLUSIÓN PROVISIONAL.-VII. BIBLIOGRAFÍA

The book is a collection of forty poems. It explores emotional complexities, contemporary social temperaments and the enduring value of literature.
Critical Acclaim:
1. “When Lovers Leave and Poetry Stays is meant for intellectual visionaries. The simple words used in these poems need deep exploration of ‘love’ in the lives of human beings, especially women, the world over.”
Late Telugu short fiction writer, winner of Sahitya Akademi Award,
Sri AbburiChaya Devi


2. “An aching raw honest sadness runs through.... Unafraid to name the utter loneliness in the veins under our glossed skin”

Usha Akella
Internationally Acclaimed poet
USA

3. “An intense fusion of sense and sensibility and competent word-play”

Dr.SanjuktaDasgupta
Visiting Professor, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
Convenor, English Advisory Board, SahityaAkademi, New Delhi
President, Executive Committee, Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library at ICCR, Kolkata
Professor, Dept of English (Retd)
Former Dean, Faculty of Arts
Calcutta University
Kolkata 700073


4.Excellent  Poems. Well crafted, with beautiful cameos to the life of
  emotions.

  Prof. SachidanandaMohanty
  Vice Chancellor, Central University of Orissa

The relationship between Mary Shelley and Claire Clairmont is usually looked at and analysed from Mary's point of view. This article reopens the debate on their relationship by demonstrating the importance of Rousseau's Julie, ou La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761) for both women. For Claire it offered a way of imaginatively refiguring the triangle of herself, Percy and Mary; for Mary, Rousseau's novel proved to be an important influence on the writing of Frankenstein (1818). The principal aim throughout this article is to put Claire centre stage, where she always wished to be. Through emphasising her "horrors" and her histrionics, and her extraordinary passion for living out literary plots and characters, it is argued that she was more than just a thorn in the side of her stepsister, and that her monstering of herself as the "third" was part of a serious attempt to rethink monogamous, heterosexual arrangements. The article forms part of the ongoing discussion of female friendship and Sapphism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Oliphant's ghost stories engage with the difficulties of modernity from a position of apparent conservatism. She uses the supernatural and textual uncertainties of the ghost story, however, as a means of exploring late nineteenth-century insecurities about history and progress. This essay analyses three stories in which Oliphant covertly explores contemporaneous issues. “The Secret Chamber” engages with problems of temporality and narration, “The Portrait” with the economic position of women, and “Earthbound” with ideas about death and mourning coterminous with the advent of psychoanalysis.

Evil in the novel titled “Przeznaczenie” by Łucja Rautenstrauchowa

In the article I analyze literary presentations of evil in Łucja Rautenstrauchowa's novel “Przeznaczenie”. I consider this aspect of the work in the context of the features characteristic of two very popular prose trends of the 18th and 19th centuries: the sentimental novel and the Gothic novel. I raise issues such as: the theme of impossible love, the construction of the main characters or the (gothic) thread of the monastery. I also wonder about the image of the Gypsies in the analyzed text, in the context of 18th and 19th century Polish literature.

Źródło / Source:
Dorota Vincůrková, Zło w powieści „Przeznaczenie” Łucji Rautenstrauchowej, in: Ciemna strona człowieka w literaturze XIX wieku, ed. Danuta Dąbrowska, Marta Zofia Bukała, Dominika Gruntkowska, Szczecin 2017, p. 119-136.

Anna Louisa Karsch stylised herself as an uneducated peasant poet possessing natural genius, moved by her ʻfeminineʼ passions and ignorant of literary conventions. As a result of her successful self-presentation, until recently scholars have not fully grasped the ways in which she engaged in literary role-play in her poems – instead often reading her works autobiographically or as statements of authentic personal feeling. By demonstrating some of the contradicting viewpoints her poems express on the topic of the ongoing Seven Yearsʼ War, this article should prove two things. Firstly, that Karsch was acutely aware of poetic techniques and genre conventions, employing and citing a variety of literary traditions; and secondly, that by playing different literary roles in her poems, making use of classical, biblical and popular genres, she approaches the topic of war from a variety of perspectives that cannot be reduced to one of simple patriotism, as has been done by most Karsch scholars since her lifetime. In short, I argue that the ʻvoicesʼ in her poems should not be automatically conflated with the authorʼs own.

... seven women once more taking care of double the number of new publications: 156 reviews by Katherine De Mattos, Margaret Hunt, Emilia Dilke, Mary Robinson, Emily Thursfield (with ... Marysa Demoor, Department of English, University of Gent, Rozier 44, B-9000 Gent, Belgium ...

Language and Colonisation Language is not just a means to communicate, but also a means to assert our identity, culture and ethnicity, as human beings living in a civilization. It helps us identify not just the things we see around us, but also who we are as people. Language is the one most prominent thing that we pass on to our future generations, which acts as a link between several generations and enables customs, traditions and community values to remain relevant through the passage of time. Colonialism affects this tradition, in ways that cannot be fully termed to be good or bad.

Nel romanzo L’ isola dell’abbandono si avvalora l'ipotesi che i luoghi hanno il potere di influenzare e modificare l’identità e il carattere delle persone: l’isola di Nasso è il luogo dove la protagonista affronta un’introspezione e, di conseguenza, una trasformazione. La scelta di quell’isola come ambientazione, che rimanda al mito di Arianna e Teseo, comprova, attraverso il parallelismo tra le due storie, i cambiamenti dello stato psicologico dopo l’atto dell’abbandono: l’isola rappresenta il simbologico punto d’incontro tra la mitica Arianna e la protagonista del romanzo, trovandosi, tutte e due, ad affrontare la solitudine, in uno spazio circoscritto e isolato.
Il romanzo affronta il tema di scelta tra rimanere o/e abbandonare, partendo dal rapporto con gli altri per arrivare a quello con se stessi. Queste scelte rimandano inoltre alle storie vissute, alla lotta dell’io con l’altro, al passato che si ripresenta per forzare la differenza tra uniformità e difformità. Lo scopo dell’intervento è analizzare la problematica e la dinamica dell’abbandono e della forza di ripartire, partendo dal personaggio femminile e il rapporto tra le sue emozioni e lo spazio circostante.