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The question of gender has been ignored sometimes or mystified in historical literary analyses. This book focuses on contemporary Catalan literature and adopts a gender perspective that is difficult to overlook today. The very limited number of female authors in earlier times – whose numbers are increasing as more and more names of female writers consigned to oblivion by the historical canon are being unearthed – provided the justification for their discrimination. This volume contributes to the analysis of those past views on gender (all gender perspectives) as they appear through the lense of contemporary Catalan literature. In the social roles they adopt, female characters act, express, and assert themselves in the language they use and are based on the society of which they form part.

Die Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts und die der historischen Avantgarde basieren auf einem traditionellen Gendercode, in dem in der Regel das weibliche Geschlecht als begehrtes Objekt männlicher (Wunsch)Träume und Phantasmen imaginiert und nur dem Mann die Rolle des Träumers zugewiesen wird. Dies ändert sich grundlegend erst ab den 70er Jahren des 20. Jahrhunderts mit dem Aufkommen der feministischen Bewegungen. Vor allem durch die kritische Relektüre der weiblichen Schreibweise (écriture féminine) als Variante der traumanalogen Schreibweise (écriture onirique) und des automatischen Schreibens (écriture automatique) bietet die Untersuchung eine alternative Traumgenealogie an.

This book focuses on an unexplored area of Edward Bond's writing. While different studies examine the violence present in his plays or his dramatic theory, questions around his powerful female characters have remained unsolved. None of the criticism has developed specifically the role of these women as speakers of their social context. The human condition that Bond depicts in his plays is not gender-oriented. From his early plays, Edward Bond has been considered misogynist, but this book presents the possibility to discover a different Bond as a writer on women with powerful voices. The reader of this book will discover in these women female spokeswomen of revolution, committed and suffering mothers but also the personification of evil and wickedness. Emotions and ideas will be analyzed in these pages in a journey through Bond's feminine universe closer to reality than to stage. Justice, the essence of humanity or the nature of oppression are dealt with through the construction of brilliant characters with no possibility of catharsis. This vision of drama as a social forum clearly exemplifies Bond's defense on the possibility of change.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of representations of female murderers in modern American drama. Paying close attention to the plays'plot, form, and style, the study seeks to come to terms with the dramatic and cultural function of this phenomenon. Given the rarity of female murder in real life, the popularity and prevalence of this theme in culture is striking and unsettling at the same time. After all, a woman who kills not only violates against basic social rules, but also upsets gender norms. This potential to break with an ideology that rests on hierarchically structured gender binaries equips the figure of the female murderer with the power to symbolically ‘kill'established views about gender and sexuality. It is this ideologically disruptive potential that makes the female murderer a fascinating object of study, as her cultural figuration may provide information about the meaning assigned to women at a certain historical moment.

Dieses Handbuch untersucht Boccaccios «De mulieribus claris» umfassend und kann so zeigen, dass sich das Werk über 106 besondere Frauen als «präfeministisch» erweist. Die unterstellte Misogynie Boccaccios ist einer Unkenntnis des lateinischen Originals oder eklektizistischem Umgang mit bloßen Fragmenten geschuldet. Umfassende Analysen von Übersetzungen und Forschungen erhellen jenen Irrtum: Boccaccio hatte, anders als Petrarca, ein bipolares Verständnis vom Menschen und setzte das Weltbild Plutarchs als gemeinsames Agieren von Männern und Frauen humanistisch fort. Vergleichende Blicke auf Christine de Pizans «Cité des Dames» zeigen, dass ein nur von und für Frauen vertretener Feminismus kein ausgewogenes Begreifen der Welt ermöglicht. Das Handbuch schließt mit einer kommentierten Bibliographie zu Werk, Autor und angrenzenden Themenkreisen.

This study is the first book-length analysis of African women's writing of Southern Africa with a focus on writing the body. The thesis is that women are not voiceless, but hold a powerful, liberating potential: they «throw their voices» by implementing a strategic corporeal. Notably, this mode is not carried out in a way of emphasising corporeal difference by lack, but by attributing positive markers to the body. It reaches beyond a speaking which only represents women's thoughts and emotions physically – a mode which might render the impression that they are incapable of expressing their conceptions and sentiments linguistically. It is an empowerment that reflects their skill to break up the bonds between language and body. This study is wide-ranging in its choice of authors and themes.