From Alice Walker’s collection In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women, “Roselily” depicts a young black woman unsure whether she is in love and worried that she might be inviting trouble. Her thoughts occur during her marriage to an… Read More ›
In this story, a discussion of how the political can be made all too personal takes place in the context of a thwarted love affair in the Deep South of the 1960s. Annie, the narrator whom the author invites you… Read More ›
“Strong Horse Tea,” a woman oppressed by racism, classism, and ignorance looks to white culture for magical cures while rejecting the home remedies of her community. Rannie Toomer, a mother whose baby, Snooks, is dying of double pneumonia and whooping… Read More ›
Probably Alice Walker’s most frequently anthologized story, “Everyday Use” first appeared in Walker’s collection In Love and Trouble: Stories by Black Women. Walker explores in this story a divisive issue for African Americans, one that has concerned a number of… Read More ›
In this coming-of-age story set in rural Canada, Alice Munro presents the astute and keenly observant daughter of Ben Jordan, an unnamed and as yet unformed girl who begins to cross from youth to adulthood and learns the meaning of… Read More ›
The heroism of black women in the face of turmoil of all kinds rings from both volumes of Alice Walker’s (born February 9, 1944) short stories like the refrain of a protest song. In Love and Trouble reveals the extremes… Read More ›
Feminist literary criticism has its origins in the intellectual and political feminist movement. It advocates a critique of maledominated language and performs “resistant” readings of literary texts or histories. Based on the premise that social systems are patriarchal—organized to privilege… Read More ›
The story of Alice Walker’s childhood scar provides the most basic metaphor of her novels: the idea that radical change is possible even under the worst conditions. Although she was never able to regain the sight in one eye, Walker’s… Read More ›
Despite the debt the African-American short story owes to the “national art form,” as Frank O’Connor called the American short story, it, like the other genres of the African-American literary tradition, must be traced back to the site that in… Read More ›
The concept of postfeminism as associated with a time after, or even reaction against, feminism, can in part be attributed to Susan Faludi’s book, Backlash (1992). Faludi’s analysis of discussions of feminism in the media suggested that the term ‘postfeminism’… Read More ›
Critics of Rita Mae Brown (born November 28, 1944) often assert that she is too radical and too argumentative in her works. Others point out that she is dealing with a problem of acceptance that has been the plight of… Read More ›
Entrance Examination for Admission to the M.Phil Courses, 2019 English Language and Literature Time: 3 Hours … Read More ›
America became a subject for literature after the Revolutionary War, when writers began the exploration of themes and motifs distinctly American. Continuing the Puritan belief in America as the New Eden, writers stressed the millennial nature of settlement and progress…. Read More ›
Aestheticism European literary movement, with its roots in France, that was predominant in the 1890’s. It denied that art needed to have any utilitarian purpose and focused on the slogan “art for art’s sake.” The doctrines of aestheticism were introduced… Read More ›
The epistolary novel, a prominent form among modern fictions, is defined as a novel presented wholly, or nearly so, in familiar letter form. Its history reaches back to classical literature, taking special inspiration from the separate traditions of the Roman… Read More ›
Feminist long fiction features female characters whose quest for self-agency leads to conflict with a traditionally masculinist and patriarchal society. These novels have been harshly criticized and dismissed—and even ridiculed—for their nontraditional female characters. Feminist ideology in the Western world… Read More ›
The term ‘Black’ is radically unstable and is applied to various, related political positions. An attempt to trace the meanings that surround and inform this term involves an engagement with its geographical, cultural and political indeterminacies, with its reliance on… Read More ›
Homosexuality, traditionally regarded as a disease or perversion by church, state, and society, was rigorously denounced and condemned by those same institutions. In the case of the arts and literature, works featuring homoeroticism or gays and lesbians as characters were… Read More ›
Third wave feminism has numerous definitions, but perhaps is best described in the most general terms as the feminism of a younger generation of women who acknowledge the legacy of second wave feminism, but also identify what they see as… Read More ›
A long and influential treatise entitled The Arte of English Poesie, published anonymously in 1589, is attributed to George Puttenham (1529–1590, though the evidence for this is not conclusive and continues to be argued by scholars. Puttenham was educated at… Read More ›
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