The Feminist Reader: Essays in Gender and the Politics of Literary Criticism

The second edition of this highly successful anthology makes available to the feminist reader a collection of essays which does justice to the range and diversity, as well as to the eloquence and the challenge of recent feminist critical theory and practice. The new, enlarged Feminist Reader includes Toni Morrison’s brilliant discussion of a Hemingway short story, Line Pouchard’s reading of Radclyffe Hall’s lesbian classic, The Well of Loneliness, Marjorie Garber on Elvis and cross-dressing, and Diane Elam on the relation between feminist and postmodernism, in addition to a selection of influential essays by prominent feminist critics and theorists. The book arose directly from the editors’ experience of teaching feminist criticism, and their sense of the need for a fully annotated, representative selection of essays for discussion. They have included a summary of each essay, a glossary of unfamiliar terms, new suggestions for further reading and an updated introduction, mapping the field of feminist critical theory.