Marge Piercy

In Marge Piercy's work, the repair of the world involves an affirmation of a healing and nurturing principle, sometimes depicted as matriarchal, but generally not gender-bound. In this book, the first comprehensive, critical survey of all of Piercy's fiction to date (including her newest novel, The Longings of Women), the author places Piercy in American literary history and in American neofeminist thought. She also highlights Piercy's analysis of power patterns in intimate relationships and in society, and constructions of sexuality and gender as they relate to issues of class and ethnicity. Situated within a feminist discursive space, The Repair of the World both builds on and challenges earlier Piercy criticism.

Dystopian literature is a potent vehicle for criticizing existing social conditions or political systems, and for warning against the potential negative consequences of utopian thought. This reference is a guide to dystopian theory and literature. It discusses the work of key theorists and summarizes several important utopian works to provide a background. The rest of the book summarizes and analyzes numerous dystopian novels, plays, and films.

Expounding the view that the feminist movement has both encouraged and enriched literature by women, Katherine Payant examines a large body of immensely popular but, for the most part, critically neglected fiction of the period from the late 1960s through the early 1990s, relating these writers and works to the women's movement and feminist theories. The study concentrates on popular fiction, which is seen as evidence of the widespread influence of feminism and as a vehicle for dissemination of "mainstream" feminist ideas. Chapters dealing with the 1970s and 1980s survey relevant feminist theories and tie them to representative novels. Chosen for special focus in individual chapters are Marge Piercy, Mary Gordon, and Toni Morrison, who reflect divergent perspectives on feminism. Written in accessible prose, this work will deepen the appreciation of readers of these novelists and increase their understanding of the effect of social movements on the arts.

In this second edition of her 1989 survey on feminist theory, Rosemarie Tong provides a more comprehensive & substantially redrawn map of twentieth-century feminist thinking. Besides providing up-to-date coverage of liberal, radical (libertarian & cultural), & Marxist-socialist schools of feminism, she covers psychoanalytic, existentialist, & postmodern feminism. All the chapters have been rethought & new chapters on ecofeminism & multicultural & global feminism have been added. Contents: Introduction. Liberal Feminism. Radical Feminism: Libertarian & Cultural Perspectives. Marxist-Socialist Feminism. Psychoanalytic & Gender Feminism. Existentialist Feminism. Postmodern Feminism. Multicultural & Global Feminism. Ecofeminism. Conclusion.

This analytical survey of contemporary fiction is a study of more than twenty-five novels written by women during a twenty-year period of rapid socio-cultural change resulting from the philosophy & goals of the contemporary women's movement. Winner of the 1990 Eudora Welty Prize.

Liberating Literature is, primarily, a bold and revealing book about feminist writers, readers, and texts. But is is also much more than that. Within this volume Maria Lauret manages to look with fresh vision at the American Civil Rights movement of the 1960s; socialist women's writing of the 1930s; the emergence of the New Left; and the second wave women's movement and its cultural practices. Lauret's historicisation of feminist political writing allows for a new definition of the genre, and enables her to illuminate the profound influence and importance of African-American women's writing. Well-grounded historically and theoretically, Liberating Literature speaks about and to a political and cultural tradition, and offers stunning new readings of both familiar and neglected novels within the feminist canon. Reader and students of feminist fiction cannot afford to be without this major new work.

A cultural studies examination of the 20th-century genre of dystopian fiction in the political and scholarly context of the evolution of science fiction studies and utopian studies since the 1960s.