Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Women Authors

When Emily Bronte was studying music in Brussels in 1842, she was drawn into the city's appreciation of Beethoven. After her exposure to the works of the great composer, Bronte's creativity flourished and she went on to compose what was to be her only novel--Wuthering Heights.

In "Emily Bronte and Beethoven," Robert K. Wallace continues to work from the perspective he developed in his "Jane Austen and Mozart"--integrating two fields that have traditionally been kept apart. Wallace compares Bronte and Beethoven through a close examination of the Romantic traits that their works share....

"Jane Addams, a Writer's Life" is an expansive, revealing, and refreshing reexamination of the renowned reformer as an imaginative writer. Jane Addams is best known for her groundbreaking social work at Hull-House, the force of her efforts toward Progressive political and social reform, and the bravery of her commitment to pacifism, for which she received the Nobel Peace Prize. Katherine Joslin moves beyond this history to present Addams as a literary figure, one whose writing employed a synthesis of fictional and analytical prose that appealed to a wide audience.

Joslin traces Addams's...

In Rewriting Womanhood, Nancy LaGreca explores the subversive refigurings of womanhood in three novels by women writers: La hija del bandido (1887) by Refugio Barragan de Toscano (Mexico; 1846-1916), Blanca Sol (1888) by Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera (Peru; 1845-1909), and Luz y sombra (1903) by Ana Roque (Puerto Rico; 1853-1933). While these women were both acclaimed and critiqued in their day, they have been largely overlooked by contemporary mainstream criticism. Detailed enough for experts yet accessible to undergraduates, graduate students, and the...

In Rewriting Womanhood, Nancy LaGreca explores the subversive refigurings of womanhood in three novels by women writers: La hija del bandido (1887) by Refugio Barragan de Toscano (Mexico; 1846-1916), Blanca Sol (1888) by Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera (Peru; 1845-1909), and Luz y sombra (1903) by Ana Roque (Puerto Rico; 1853-1933). While these women were both acclaimed and critiqued in their day, they have been largely overlooked by contemporary mainstream criticism. Detailed enough for experts yet accessible to undergraduates, graduate students, and the...

The first three decades of the twentieth century saw the New Woman writing an astonishing array of dramatic presentations. This checklist, gleaned from hundreds of library collections and out-of-print anthologies, reveals over 12,000 plays by perhaps 2,000 American women. Some of these works are well known, most are not; some are of enduring literary quality, probably most are not; but all are of social significance and serve to document women's history of the period. Included in a broad definition of play, are dramas and comedies, musicals, farces, monologues and dialogues, pageants and...

This discography is successful in its attempt to present a complete picture of women instrumentalists' recording activity from 1913 to 1968.' Jan Leder also shows the significant contributions made by women in jazz and their involvement playing jazz since its beginnings. The book contains two parts: Discography of Women in Jazz and Collective Section. The first section arranges names alphabetically by name of player with works arranged chronologically for each player. The second section is a chronological listing of recordings with two or more players. It gives date, place, name of...

Elinor Remick Warren's distinguished career as a composer, concert pianist, and accompanist for renowned singers spanned seventy-five years of American musical history. She began writing music in 1904 at age four. Her first published composition, a song, was accepted by G. Schirmer in 1916. Thereafter, her compositions appeared regularly through 1990. Her full oeuvre is cataloged here along with performance information, discography, and review and critical commentary, all of which is carefully documented, cross-referenced, and indexed. A biographical sketch is supplemented by a long...

This reference summarizes and overviews the life and career of Katharine Cornell, one of the foremost actresses of the American stage from 1920 to 1960. The book begins with a biography that briefly discusses Cornell's life and achievements. A chronology then outlines the most significant events in her career. The chapters that follow provide detailed information on her stage appearances and radio, film, and television work. The credits, casts, synopses, brief histories, commentaries, and selected critical reviews are included for each of the plays in which she appeared. An extensive...

This study presents an exciting new approach to novels that combine the traditions of Romance and Realism to offer a more comprehensive view of contemporary life. Women are the prototypical Other in patriarchal societies, as can be seen in the first four novelists--Eudora Welty, Gloria Naylor, Margaret Atwood, and Doris Lessing--who are primarily known as realists but who disrupt our expectations to shift our perspective. Moreover, Shinn analyzes how Maxine Hong Kingston, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Toni Cade Bambara write out of their consciousness as hyphenated Americans about what is...

Although Ida Lupino is best known as a leading actress in many Hollywood B movies, her work as a filmmaker has been neglected by critics, historians, and audiences. In the late 1940s, Lupino turned writer, producer, and director in her own independent production company. The films she made, beginning with "Not Wanted" in 1949, were low-budget pictures taking an uncompromising approach to controversial subject matter -- unmarried motherhood, disability, rape, bigamy. Lupino is exceptional as the only woman to have directed a visible body of films in the male-dominated Hollywood of the...

In this study of 19th- and 20th-century French and Italian women's autobiography, the author illustrates how the protagonists' development unfolds through separation from oppressive social and familial structures. Reading the selected life stories as bildungsromane and drawing on an array of both canonical and noncanonical texts in the various autobiographical subgenres, Marrone concludes that the heroines' movements away from oppressive structures are not limited to particular historical periods but are motivated by historical and cultural circumstances. She thoughtfully traces the...

Gender-oriented studies of 19th-century Russian literature have struggled with how to determine the feminism or misogyny of particular authors. This book argues that in order to make this determination, we need to engage with the poetics of the text rather than rely on the author's stated views. By focusing on the character type of the ward, or young female dependent, this book examines the narrative strategies used by such writers as Pushkin, Zhukova, Tolstoy, Herzen, and Dostoevsky to represent socially marginal women in their works.

Drawing on the theories of Bakhtin, the volume...

This beautifully illustrated reference work is the only source of information on American women sculptors as a group. Virginia Watson-Jones presents the accomplishments of more than 350 contemporary American women sculptors through photographs of their major works and detailed information about their lives and careers. For each artist information is provided on her birthplace and birth year, education, preferred media, major exhibitions, location of work in public collections, awards, selected private collectors, professional interests other than sculpture, teaching position (if...

Literary critics such as Virginia Woolf and Lionel Trilling had noted intuitive affinities between the art of Jane Austen and that of Mozart, but this 1983 book was the first to compare their artistic style and individual works in a comprehensive way. Extended comparisons are of course difficult because of the intrinsic differences between prose fiction and instrumental music.

In "Jane Austen and Mozart," Robert K. Wallace has succeeded in making illuminating comparisons of spirit and form in the work of these two artists. His book celebrates the achievements of Austen and Mozart by...