Feminism

1
Feminism

• Feminism is theory that men and women should be
  equal politically, economically and socially.
  This is the core of all feminism theories.

2
Gender theory

• Social construction upon biological differences.
• Proposes to explore ideological inscription and
  the literary effects of the sex/gender system.
• Open up the literary theory stage and bring in
  questions of masculinity into feminist theory

3
Gender theory

• Taking gender as a fundamental analytic category
  brings feminist criticism from the margin to the
  center.

4
Queer

• The word queer is queer theory has some of
  these connotations, particularly its alignment
  with the ideas about homosexuality.
• Queer theory is a brand-new branch of study or
  theoretical speculation it has only named as an
  area since about 1991.

5
Sexuality

• The ideas about sexuality often take the form of
  moral statements about what forms of sexuality
  are right, or good, or moral, and which are
  wrong, bad, and immoral. These categories have
  shifted over time, which is another way of
  arguing that definitions of sexuality are not
  essential or timeless or innate, but rather are
  social constructs, things that can change and be
  manipulated.

6
Gay/lesbian studies

• Look at the kinds of social constructs and social
  constructs which define our ideas about sexuality
  as act and sexuality as identity.
• Look at how notions of homosexuality have
  historically been definedand of course, in doing
  so, look also at how its binary opposite,
  heterosexuality, has been defined.

7
Gay/lesbian literary criticism

• Looks at images of sexuality, and ideas of
  normative and deviant behavior, in a number of
  ways
• by finding gay/lesbian authors whose sexuality
  has been masked or erased in history and
  biography
• by looking at texts by gay/lesbian authors to
  discover particular literary themes, techniques,
  and perspectives which come from being a
  homosexual in a heterosexual world
• By looking at textsby gay or straight
  authorswhich depict homosexuality and
  heterosexuality, or which focus on sexuality as a
  constructed concept

8
Queer theory

• Insists that all sexual behaviors, all concepts
  linking sexual behaviors to sexual identities,
  and all categories of normative and deviant
  sexualities, are social constructs.
• Follows feminist theory and gay/lesbian studies
  in rejecting the idea that sexuality is an
  essentialists category, something determined by
  biology or judged by eternal standards of
  morality and truth.

9
Marxist Criticism

• According to Marxists, and to other scholars in
  fact, literature reflects those social
  institutions out of which it emerges and is
  itself a social institution with a particular
  ideological function.
• Literature reflects class struggles and
  materialism think how often the quest for wealth
  traditionally defines characters

10
Marxist criticism

• Marxists generally view literature not as works
  created in accordance with timeless artistic
  criteria, but as products of the economic and
  ideological determinants specific to that era.
• Literature reflects an authors own class or
  analysis of class relations, however piercing or
  shallow that analysis may be.