The Da Vinci Code, Columbia Pictures (2006), directed by Ron Howard from a script by Akiva Goldsman (based on the novel by Dan Brown); producers Brian Grazer and John Calley. Cinematography by Salvatore Totino; score by Hans Zimmer. With Tom Hanks (Robert Langston), Audrey Tautou (Sophie Neveu), Ian McKellen (Leigh Teabing), Jean Reno (Bezu Fache), Paul Bettany (Silas), Alfred Molina (Bishop Aringarosa). 148 minutes. (Goldsman and Brown)
§“The power of the female and her ability to produce life was once very sacred, but it posed a threat to the rise of the predominantly male Church, and so the sacred feminine was demonized and called unclean.
§It was man, not God, who created the concept of 'original sin,' whereby Eve tasted of the apple and caused the downfall of the human race. Woman, once the sacred giver of life, was now the enemy."
§“This concept of woman as life-bringer was the foundation of ancient religion.”
§“Sadly, Christian philosophy decided to embezzle the female's creative power by ignoring biological truth and making man the Creator.”
§“Genesis tells us that Eve was created from Adam's rib. Woman became an offshoot of man. And a sinful one at that. Genesis was the beginning of the end for the goddess." * "It's important to remember that the ancients' view of sex was entirely opposite from ours today. Sex begot new life - the ultimate miracle - and miracles could be performed only by a god. The ability of the woman to produce life from her womb made her sacred. A god... It's a deeply sacrosanct ceremony".
While watching the movie The Da Vinci Code, keep an eye on following questions:
1.Compare the beginning of the Novel (Brown) and that of the movie. What difference do you notice? Which narrative seems to be more effective? Give your reasons.
2.How is Christianity challenged in novel? What sort of religious controversy is discussed?
3.Which truth from the life of Jesus Christ was buried and constant attempts were made to hide some facts? WHY?
4.Da Vinci’s painting is symbolically observed by symbologists like Leigh Teabing and Robert Langdon. How do they read symbols? What do they deconstruct in the process of re-reading Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting?
5.Explain the symbolism in ‘Holy Grail’? How is this symbol re-interpreted in the novel by Dan Brown?
6.Concept clarification: Watch carefully to understand following terms:
Brown states on his website that his books are notanti-Christian, though he is on a 'constant spiritual journey' himself, and says that his bookThe Da Vinci Codeis simply "an entertaining story that promotes spiritual discussion and debate" and suggests that the book may be used "as a positive catalyst for introspection and exploration of our faith."
“Although it is obvious that much of what Brown presented in his novel as absolutely true and accurate is neither of those, some of that material is of course essential to the intrigue, and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman has retained the novel's core, the Grail-related material: the sacred feminine, Mary Magdalene's marriage, the Priory of Sion, certain aspects of Leonardo's art, and so on[1].” How far do you agree with this observation of Norris J. Lacy?
(If)You have studied ‘Genesis’ (The Bible), ‘The Paradise Lost’ (John Milton) and ‘The Da Vinci Code’ (Dan Brown). Which of the narrative/s seem/s to be truthful? Whose narrative is convincing to the contemporary young mind?
What harm has been done to humanity by the biblical narration or that of Milton’s in The Paradise Lose? What sort of damage does narrative like ‘The Vinci Code’ do to humanity?
What difference do you see in the portrayal of 'Ophelia' (Kate Winslet) in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, 'Elizabeth' (Helena Bonham Carter) in Kenneth Branagh's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or 'Hester Prynne' (Demi Moore) inRoland Joffé's The Scarlet Letter' or David Yates's 'Harmione Granger' (Emma Watson) in last four Harry Potter films - and 'Sophie Neuve' (Audrey Tautau) in Ron Howard's The Da Vinci Code? How would justify your answer?
Do novel / film lead us into critical (deconstructive) thinking about your religion? Can we think of such conspiracy theory about Hindu religious symbols / myths?
Have you come across any similar book/movie, which tries to deconstruct accepted notions about Hindu religion or culture and by dismantling it, attempts to reconstruct another possible interpretation of truth?
When we do traditional reading of the novel ‘The Da Vinci Code’, Robert Langdon, Professor of Religious Symbology, Harvard University emerges as protagonist and Sir Leigh Teabing, a British Historian as antagonist. Who will claim the position of protagonist if we do atheist reading of the novel?
Explain Ann Gray’s three propositions on ‘knowability’ with illustrations from the novel ‘The Da Vinci Code’.
a.1) Identifying what is knowable b.2) identifying and acknowledging the relationship of the knower and the known c.3) What is the procedure for ‘knowing’?
UGC / CBSE - NET and Gujarat SET (English): Online Question Papers
This blog is for those students/scholars/teachers who are preparing for UGC (now CBSE) NET (English Literature) examination. The students of the Department of English, M.K. Bhavnagar University have prepared these online tests. All those who appear in this online test will get their grades with right answers in email. Scroll down for important links to know more about NET exam dates, notification and paper pattern.
You are requested to inform on dilipbarad (at) gmail (dot) com for grade-sheet after appearing in the test.
Please give correct email id, if you want to receive correct answers of these quizzes.
Click on these links to practice online test on previous years' UGC NET and GSET question papers:
Prof. Om P. Juneja, Prof. Emeritus, HMP Institute of English Teaching and Research (Vallabh Vidya Nagar), Former, Prof. Dept. of English, M.S. Universtiy of Baroda - having talk with studetns of Department of English, M.K. Bhavnagar University, Bhavnagar. The topic of discusion is 'Chetan Bhagat - the Writer'. The speaker discussed:
* what is right / wrong with Chetan Bhagat
* Politics of Awards
* Young India and
* why study Chetan Bhagat?
The students of the Department of English are studying Chetan Bhagat's 'One Night @ The Call Centre'. They (especially Ajay Jajeda, Avani Dave, Deepti Joshi, Hirva Vora, Riddhi Jani and Nidhi Kunvarani) actiely participated in the talk via Google Hangout on Air.
You can view the auto-recorded video (which is interesting feature of Google Hangout on Air. Keep in mind, it is not simple video call over Hangout. It is Google Hangout on Air!)with a few edits on YouTube. The video is embedded hereunder:
Chetan Bhagat is quite a controversial write in the gallaries of canonical literary studies. Thus, he arouses quite contradictory reactions. There are people who are die-hard fan - and there are who do not miss a chance to attack him. View this wonderful video where the author meets the hater:
There were interesting debates on news channels regarding Chetan Bhagat's new book 'Half Girlfriend'.
Here are videos of those talk-shows:
(Nepathya - Aside)
Isn't the success story of Chetan Bhagat the success story of capitalism? The Capitalism functions on one mantra: 'Under the garb of Freedom, encash everything!" Turn everything into commodity, market it, create buyers and earn money. Be it faith or literature, market it like beverages and skin whiteners; and see the tamaashaa! Those who are not surprised to see the rising demand of Ganesh Pandals, are not surprised to see rising demands of Chetan Bhagat; as they very understand the market phenomenon in capitalist societies. However, the question is: "Are those who are surprised at Chetan Bhagat phenomenon, surprised or shocked at rising marketing and commodification of rituals/faith? (last two videos and this note updated on 29 Aug 2014)
There was an interesting discussion on 'What makes for a canonical writer?' on ELTAI Literature SIG. Let me share some of the observations which were discussed on this thread: (To give due respect to the originality of all the contributors, their views are copy-pasted retaining font size, type and colour as they designed them :) )
Some people say that Chetan Bhagat is not an "established writer". Some others say that he is not a literary author.
So making a research or study on his works is useless and wont bring any good response or help increase API.
Now may I request you learned masters to please help me appease my curiosity and tell me how to differentiate between 'an established writer' and a 'non established writer' OR how to know whether a particular author is a literary author or not.
For ex. Adiga wrote a single novel and he is accepted as an established writer and a literary author but Bhagat, despite writing almost half a dozen books is still lacking this status.
Please help me. I'm much puzzled. ~ J.K. Mishra
A difficult problem really. There are no set formulae to evaluate a writer to admit him in the literary fold. A work should be faithful and true to the world it creates. It should present human problems and situations and not lead us into fanciful worlds of unreality. Apart from them there are formal features of a work which also help us to judge it. Try to read relevant chapters in Rene Wellek and Austin Warren's Theory of Literature. You may find them useful. ~ Nagarajan
I do not know if I will be able to satisfy you with my query but let me try to answer. No work is really literary or non literary. It is we who place it in categories. I personally think that if a book is able to touch us deep inside and make us feel then the book is good as it emotes with us. As students and teachers of literature it is our duty to remove hierarchies and accept differences. Unfortunately, we are caught in this mire of canonisation. Today in many universities there are popular fiction courses and you may know about the anthology on pulp fiction. I do prefer Adiga to Bhagat because I felt that Adiga brought out the problem of the poor beautifully while I feel with Bhagat the purpose of the story is more to gain an audience. These are my own views. ~ kalpana Rao
It's all politics of literature teaching within the academia. It's the reader and his/her assessment that matters. A few Mphil students of mine have done research on Bhagat. One is doing PhD. I have recommended him for PG course in a few autonomous colleges. Mostly, those who denounce him have not read him!
Common people have rejected Adiga though he is accepted by academics and award-giving institutions like Booker because of a new moral standard the White Tiger seems to suggest.
The idea of canonical text can be traced back to ten qualities of a great work in Aristotle's Poetics.
If we judge by Aristotle' standard, most Dalit lit cannot be labelled lit at all. ~ John Sekar
I personally feel that no author, no art form, no form of any representation is either inferior or superior. Nothing is beyond the reach or relevance of academic interest. These are days when we have serious research projects on cartoons, advertisements and even graffiti! The crucial thing is probably the approach we take in analyzing or studying them, and the tools we use. ~ Lal C.A.
Chetan Bhagat is a master story teller and one the best-selling authors during the recent times. All his books provide enjoyable reading.whether we consider them as literary works or not. It is also a different question altogether if they would stand the test of time or not.
In my view one may take them up for research for the M.Phil.degree.At this level students are after all expected mainly to get a thorough knowledge of methodology of doing literary research. But in the case of Ph.D. degree we expect our scholars attain a certain amount of scholarship at least in the field chosen. Can we expect it on the part of one who has just worked on Chetan Baghat? ~
S. Rajagopalan.
Your point is worth arguing indeed. It all depends on how to classify the author in terms of literary canon. But if the canon is itself elitist how to identify the author for your project is a disturbing question. But one thing is sure, if the thesis statement accommodates the seriousness that is required, no one can reject it outright. In Malayalam literature also this kind of discussions happen especially (humorously) of course between two Varkeys. One is Muttath Varkey who is a popular writer of the late 50s and 60s and Ponkunnam Varkey who is a devoted Modernist with a strong moorings in native culture. The former was not generally taken seriously by the academia for "want of high seriousness" but the latter is adored by many researchers. Go ahead! ~
Dr.Muralikrishnan T.R.
I do not think that serious research on Chetan Bhagat is not possible and no univeristy can deny or invalidate degree, if a really serious work is done on any popular culture or literature. In fact, now it is time to give serious readings to contemporaneity in art, literature and culture.
Popular fictions represent contemporary taste. If we deny its study, we will fail to understand it in future. They are cultural artefacts which requires serious attention. They have an appeal to the readers/viewers/audiences, which cannot be asked to abstain from. One should make genuine attempt to understand it. We should not forget that it was Aristotle's study of popular Greek dramatist and it was Dryden's study of popular English dramatist, that they are with us. We have glaring examples of writers like Wordsworth, who was considered as childish and his poem, nursery rhyms by elite critics - today the critics are dead, and Wordsworth is remembered as epoch-maker in hitory of Literature. Samule Beckett's 'absurdity' has an appeal to the people - and after bashing from elite critics, people started giving serious consideration - and Martin Esslin termed 'theatre of absurd'.
So, the question of whether to study CB or Amish, or JKRowing or James Hadley Chase, Mills and Boons or for that matter any popular writer is irrelevant.
But the important point is to give serious reading with scientific inquiry, objectiveness, systematic analysis, relevant hypothetical question, and with deep insight into the nature of research. The research tools/questions/methodology is important > in fact, it is 'the' important thing > rather than the object /text under evaluation. We can keep tools devised by Aristotle, Dryden, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Matthew Arnold, New Critics, Reader Response theorists, feminists, psychological critics, Northrop Frye, Marxists (this can be of great help in CB's case), post-structuralists (Derrida, Paul DeMan et all), post-colonial (Homi Bhabha, Spivak et all), new historicist (stephen Greenblatt) and New Cultural critics (from raymond williams, heidbige, hoggarth to Slovaj Zizek). . . . and if possible, device 'new canon' to read these new breeds of writers.
The follwoing articles and books can be useful in the study:
Peter Swirski, "Popular and Highbrow Literature: A Comparative View"
Matthew Schneider-Mayerson "Popular Fiction Studies: The Advantages of a New Field"
The Cambridge Companion to Popular Fiction EDITORS: David Glover,University of Southampton, Scott McCracken,Keele University. ~
Dilip Barad
The ongoing debate on Chetan Bhagat needs some clarity. We can't question whether he is a literary figure or not. Keeping in view his books and their contents, we can easily observe the elements of literature .i.e. fictive background, ironical temper, imaginative impulse, comical vein, reformatory zeal, etc. that largely constitute the corpus of any literary piece. From all these angles, he stands as a literary figure.
What we can question is- Is his language literary? that is also an important part of any powerful literature.From this angle, he doesn't have a literary pen at his command. A literary language is identified with a brilliant use of figure of speech, its narrative details, unconventional syntax intending to widen the horizon of literary expressions, unusual range of vocabulary, etc. Actually, it is the language of literature that induces irresistible reading of any literary writing. The force of language interwoven with thematic strings constitute a powerful literary creation. But Bhagat miserably fails in stuffing his works with this remarkable feature. We can juxtapose his writings with Arundhati / Kiran, etc. to understand this point more clearly. This linguistic weakness of Bhagat will always make the sensitive readers of literature doubt his literary potential to be reckoned in terms of universal and eternal values a literary piece truly inculcates.~
Dr. Raj Kr Sharma
He is making so many young readers sensible towards zeitgeist. Beneath his seeming simplicity, hokey spiritualism n bollywoodish philosophy, there is 'something unnarratable - which compels people to read him. ~ Dilip Barad
To many, the call center has become the symbol of India's rapidly globalizing economy. While traditional India sleeps, a dynamic population of highly skilled,articulate professionals works through the night, functioning on U.S. time under made-up American aliases. They feign familiarity with a culture and climate
they've never experienced, earn salaries that their elders couldn't have imagined (but still a fraction of what an American would make), and enjoy a lifestyle that's a cocktail of premature affluence and ersatz Westernization. It's a subculture that merits closer exam ination, and in Chetan Bhagat's One Night @ the Call Center, a breezy bestseller that has taken middle-class India by storm, the Samuel Johnsons of this brave new world have found their Boswell. ~ Shashi Tharoor.
Serious critics will no doubt quibble with the two-dimensional characterization, the pedestrian prose, the plot's contrved deus ex machina, and the author's hokey spiritualism. But non of that matters. ~ Shashi Tharoor.
Bhagat's tone is pitch-perfect, his observer's eye keenly focused on nuance and detail. Verisimilitude is all. ~ Shashi Tharoor.
multiplying, and the demand for skilled "agents" has driven salaries up to ever more attractive levels. Although many may suffer the angst this novel so effectively conveys, most see a job in a call center as a passport to a better life, one offering more possibilities and choices than were imaginable to the previous generation. These young Indians may keep unsocial hours, neglect their family obligations, drink excessive cocktails with names like "Long Island Iced Tea," and date each other with
a casualness that horrifies their par ents. But they are part of a social and economic revolution that is enriching and transforming India, mostly for the better. Chetan Bhagat may not entrely approve, but it's this new India that's buying his book.
Do not miss to visit www.chetanbhagat.com > and his blog on this site to read responses from the readers and author's answers.
One reason why I find Chetan Bhagat interesting is because he is so different from academically hyped `Indian Writing in English canon comprising mostly of the diasporic writers like Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri or Kiran Desai. The guy writes about people and world with which the ` Eng. Lit' academics are not really familiar. Bhagat's novels are about India that is more recognizable than the one you find in The Moor's Last Sigh or The Midnight's Children. The Eng Lit. scholars are more conversant with Jhumpa Lahiri's expatriate NRIs living in New York than with people who work in the call-centre just round the corner. ~ Prof. Sachin Ketkar, M.S. Uni., Baroda. Read more . . . http://sachinketkar.blogspot.in/2009/12/on-disliking-chetan-bhagat.html
All the students of Semester 4 (New Literature Course) are suggested to post thier views on how enriching it was to listen Prof. Juneja - on Google Plus Community of our Department or as comment under this blog.
Do not miss to review following writeups on Chetan Bhagat:
This content explores the work and ideas of Elaine Showalter, a prominent figure in feminist literary theory and criticism. Showalter's writings emphasize the importance of understanding the feminist tradition and its impact on literary analysis. She criticizes stereotypes of feminism and the tendency to neglect theory, arguing for a poetics of feminist criticism. Showalter divides feminist criticism into two sections: the woman as reader or feminist critique, which examines the representation of women in literature and critiques male-dominated perspectives, and the woman as writer or gynocritics, which focuses on constructing a female framework for analyzing women's literature. Showalter acknowledges the challenges of defining women's writing but sees gynocriticism as a means to understand women's relation to literary culture. She outlines three phases of women's literature: the feminine phase, the feminist phase, and the female phase, each characterized by different goals and approaches. Showalter calls for a cultural perspective in feminist criticism that recognizes the diversity of women's experiences. Overall, Showalter's views on feminist poetics are intelligent, balanced, and thought-provoking, reflecting her belief in the transformative power of feminist analysis.
About the author: Elaine Showalter (born January 21, 1941) is an American literary critic, feminist, and writer on cultural and social issues. She is one of the founders of feminist literary criticism in United States academia, developing the concept and practice of gynocritics.
She is well known and respected in both academic and popular cultural fields. She has written and edited numerous books and articles focused on a variety of subjects, from feminist literary criticism to fashion, sometimes sparking widespread controversy, especially with her work on illnesses. Showalter has been a television critic for People magazine and a commentator on BBC radio and television.
Showalter is a specialist in Victorian literature and the Fin-de-Siecle (turn of the 19th century). Her most innovative work in this field is in madness and hysteria in literature, specifically in women’s writing and in the portrayal of female characters.
Showalter's best known works are Toward a Feminist Poetics (1979), The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture (1830–1980) (1985), Sexual Anarchy: Gender at Culture at the Fin de Siecle (1990), Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media (1997), and Inventing Herself: Claiming a Feminist Intellectual Heritage (2001). In 2007 Showalter was chair of the judges for the prestigious British literary award, the Man Booker International Prize.
Showalter's book Inventing Herself (2001), a survey of feminist icons, seems to be the culmination of a long-time interest in communicating the importance of understanding feminist tradition. Showalter’s early essays and editorial work in the late 1970s and the 1980s survey the history of the feminist tradition within the “wilderness” of literary theory and criticism. Working in the field of feminist literary theory and criticism, which was just emerging as a serious scholarly pursuit in universities in the 1970s, Showalter's writing reflects a conscious effort to convey the importance of mapping her discipline’s past in order to both ground it in substantive theory, and amass a knowledge base that will be able to inform a path for future feminist academic pursuit.
Showalter is concerned by stereotypes of feminism that see feminist critics as being ‘obsessed with the phallus’ and ‘obsessed with destroying male artists’. Showalter wonders if such stereotypes emerge from the fact that feminism lacks a fully articulated theory.
Another problem for Showalter is the way in which feminists turn away from theory as a result of the attitudes of some male academics: theory is their property. Showalter writes: ‘From this perspective, the academic demand for theory can only be heard as a threat to the feminist need for authenticity, and the visitor looking for a formula that he or she can take away without personal encounter is not welcome’. In response, Showalter wants to outline a poetics of feminist criticism.
In Toward a Feminist Poetics Showalter divides feminist criticism into two sections:
•The Woman as Reader or Feminist Critique : ‘the way in which a female reader changes our apprehension of a given text, awakening it to the significance of its sexual codes’; historically grounded inquiry which probes the ideological assumptions of literary phenomena’; ‘subjects include the images and stereotypes of women in literature, the omissions of and misconceptions about women in criticism, and the fissures in male–constructed literary history’; ‘concerned with the exploitation and manipulation of the female audience, especially in popular culture and film, and with the analysis of woman–as–sign in semiotic systems’; ‘political and polemical’; like the Old Testament looking for the errors of the past.
One of the problems of the feminist critique is that it is male–orientated. If we study stereotypes of women, the sexism of male critics, and the limited roles women play in literary history, we are not learning what women have felt and experienced, but only what men thought women should be. […] The critique also has a tendency to naturalize women’s victimization by making it the inevitable and obsessive topic of discussion.
•The Woman as Writer or Gynocritics (la gynocritique) :
Showalter coined the term 'gynocritics' to describe literary criticism based in a feminine perspective. Probably the best description Showalter gives of gynocritics is in Towards a Feminist Poetics:
In contrast to [an] angry or loving fixation on male literature, the program of gynocritics is to construct a female framework for the analysis of women’s literature, to develop new models based on the study of female experience, rather than to adapt male models and theories. Gynocritics begins at the point when we free ourselves from the linear absolutes of male literary history, stop trying to fit women between the lines of the male tradition, and focus instead on the newly visible world of female culture.
This does not mean that the goal of gynocritics is to erase the differences between male and female writing; gynocritics is not “on a pilgrimage to the promised land in which gender would lose its power, in which all texts would be sexless and equal, like angels”. Rather gynocritics aims to understand the specificity of women’s writing not as a product of sexism but as a fundamental aspect of female reality. Its prime concern is to see ‘woman as producer of textual meaning, with the history themes, genres, and structures of literature by women’. Its ‘subjects include the psychodynamics of female creativity. It studies linguistics and the problem of a female language in literary text. It reviews the trajectory of the individual or collective female literary career. It proposes ‘to construct a female framework for the analysis of women’s literature, to develop new models based on women’s experience’. Its study ‘focuses on the newly visible world of female culture’; ‘hypotheses of a female sub–culture’; ‘the occupations, interactions, and consciousness of women’. It projects how ‘feminine values penetrate and undermine the masculine systems that contain them’. And at its extreme, it is ‘engaged in the myth of the Amazons, and the fantasies of a separate female society’.
Showalter acknowledges the difficulty of “[d]efining the unique difference of women’s writing” which she says is “a slippery and demanding task” in “Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness”. She says that gynocritics may never succeed in understanding the special differences of women’s writing, or realize a distinct female literary tradition. But, with grounding in theory and historical research, Showalter sees gynocriticism as a way to “learn something solid, enduring, and real about the relation of women to literary culture”.
Showalter then provides an exemplary feminist critique of Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge to demonstrate that “one of the problems of the feminist critique is that it is male-oriented,” meaning that, in some sense, every feminist critique, even when criticizing patriarchy, is focused toward the male. As an alternative, Showalter presents gynocritics as a way “to construct a female framework for the analysis of women’s literature, to develop new models based on the study of female experience, rather that to adapt to male models and theories.”
To begin to trace out this radically female-centered theory, Showalter notes excerpts from feminist historians and sociologists. She then moves on to an engaging discussion of the experiences of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and other female authors to show the need for “completeness” in discussing women authors’ work way in which “it is necessary to leave oneself room to deal with other things besides [women writers'] work, so much has that work been influenced by conditions that have nothing whatever to do with art.”
Beauvoir, Cixous and Showalter: The Trio of Feminist Literary Thought
Three Phases:
From these experiences, Showalter then begins a rough sketch of some of the elements that have characterized women’s writing: awakening, suffering, unhappiness, and matrophobia, among others. She concludes with her classification of women’s writing into three phases that “establish[es] the continuity of the female tradition from decade to decade, rather than from Great Woman to Great Woman.”
Thus, Showalter traces the history of women's literature, suggesting that it can be divided into three phases:
The Feminine phase (1840–1880): Showalter sees the first phases taking place from roughly 1840 to 1880; she calls this “the Feminine phase” and declares that it is characterized by “women [writing] in an effort to equal the intellectual achievements of the male culture… The distinguishing sign of this period is the male pseudonym… [which] exerts an irregular pressure on the narrative, affecting tone, diction, structure, and characterization.”
The Feminist phase (1880–1920): The second, Feminist phase follows from 1880 to 1920, wherein “women are historically enabled to reject the accommodating postures of femininity and to use literature to dramatize the ordeals of wronged womanhood.” This phase is characterized by “Amazon Utopias,” visions of perfect, female-led societies of the future. This phase was characterized by women’s writing that protested against male standards and values, and advocated women’s rights and values, including a demand for autonomy.
The Female phase (1920— ) is one of self-discovery. Showalter says, “women reject both imitation and protest—two forms of dependency—and turn instead to female experience as the source of an autonomous art, extending the feminist analysis of culture to the forms and techniques of literature”. Significantly, Showalter does not offer a characteristic sign or figure for the Female phase, suggesting a welcome diversity of experience that is too broad to be encompassed in a single image.
Rejecting both imitation and protest, Showalter advocates approaching feminist criticism from a cultural perspective in the current Female phase, rather than from perspectives that traditionally come from an androcentric perspective like psychoanalytic and biological theories, for example. Feminists in the past have worked within these traditions by revising and criticizing female representations, or lack thereof, in the male traditions (that is, in the Feminine and Feminist phases). In her essay Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness (1981), Showalter says, "A cultural theory acknowledges that there are important differences between women as writers: class, race nationality, and history are literary determinants as significant as gender. Nonetheless, women’s culture forms a collective experience within the cultural whole, an experience that binds women writers to each other over time and space".
Conclusion: On the whole, we may conclude that her views on feminist poetics are intelligent, largely devoid of rhetorical extremities, and confidently provocative. Showalter speaks with calmly convincing authority, as one who firmly believes in the verity of what she’s saying. She is both earnest, in that she sees change needing to occur immediately, and patient, in that she expects that, given time enough, the wisdom and truth of her cause will prevail.
Additional Resources:
An extraordinary criticism of the dangers of trying to talk for those who have no voice in society. Why? Because it is extremely hard to truly understand what you have only heard about, and not experienced. Watch Macat’s short video for a great introduction to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?”—one of the most important essays in the field of postcolonial studies ever written.
References:
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.
Eagleton, Mary, editor. Feminist Literary Theory: A Reader.
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination.
Leitch, Vincent B., editor. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.
Showalter, Elaine. ‘Toward a Feminist Poetics’. The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory. Ed. Elaine Showalter. London: Virago, 1986. 125- 143
Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing.
Showalter, Elaine. “Toward a Feminist Poetics,” was originally published in Mary Jacobus's anthology Women Writing and Writing about Women (1979)
Thompson, Zoë Brigley. The Midnight Heart. 'Toward a Feminist Poetics' by Elaine Showalter. << http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/zoebrigley/entry/towards_a_feminist/>
Tolan, Fiona. Feminisms. An Oxford Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Ed. Patricia Waugh. OUP. 2006.
Wikipedia contributors. "Elaine Showalter." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 12 Oct. 2013. Web. 27 Dec. 2022.
