For a long time now, readers and scholars have strained against the limits of traditional literary criticism, whose precepts-above all, "objectivity"-seem to have so little to do with the highly personal and deeply felt experience of literature. The Intimate Critique marks a movement away from this tradition. With their rich spectrum of personal and passionate voices, these essays challenge and ultimately breach the boundaries between criticism and narrative, experience and expression, literature and life. Grounded in feminism and connected to the race, class, and gender paradigms in cultural studies, the twenty-six contributors to this volume-including Jane Tompkins, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Shirley Nelson Garner, and Shirley Goek-Lin Lim-respond in new, refreshing ways to literary subjects ranging from Homer to Freud, Middlemarch to The Woman Warrior, Shiva Naipaul to Frederick Douglass. Revealing the beliefs and formative life experiences that inform their essays, these writers characteristically recount the process by which their opinions took shape--a process as conducive to self-discovery as it is to critical insight. The result-which has been referred to as "personal writing," "experimental critical writing," or "intellectual autobiography"-maps a dramatic change in the direction of literary criticism.Contributors. Julia Balen, Dana Beckelman, Ellen Brown, Sandra M. Brown, Rosanne Kanhai-Brunton, Suzanne Bunkers, Peter Carlton, Brenda Daly, Victoria Ekanger, Diane P. Freedman, Olivia Frey, Shirley Nelson Garner, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Melody Graulich, Gail Griffin, Dolan Hubbard, Kendall, Susan Koppelman, Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Linda Robertson, Carol Taylor, Jane Tompkins, Cheryl Torsney, Trace Yamamoto, Frances Murphy Zauhar
Show moreFor a long time now, readers and scholars have strained against the limits of traditional literary criticism, whose precepts-above all, "objectivity"-seem to have so little to do with the highly personal and deeply felt experience of literature. The Intimate Critique marks a movement away from this tradition. With their rich spectrum of personal and passionate voices, these essays challenge and ultimately breach the boundaries between criticism and narrative, experience and expression, literature and life. Grounded in feminism and connected to the race, class, and gender paradigms in cultural studies, the twenty-six contributors to this volume-including Jane Tompkins, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Shirley Nelson Garner, and Shirley Goek-Lin Lim-respond in new, refreshing ways to literary subjects ranging from Homer to Freud, Middlemarch to The Woman Warrior, Shiva Naipaul to Frederick Douglass. Revealing the beliefs and formative life experiences that inform their essays, these writers characteristically recount the process by which their opinions took shape--a process as conducive to self-discovery as it is to critical insight. The result-which has been referred to as "personal writing," "experimental critical writing," or "intellectual autobiography"-maps a dramatic change in the direction of literary criticism.Contributors. Julia Balen, Dana Beckelman, Ellen Brown, Sandra M. Brown, Rosanne Kanhai-Brunton, Suzanne Bunkers, Peter Carlton, Brenda Daly, Victoria Ekanger, Diane P. Freedman, Olivia Frey, Shirley Nelson Garner, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Melody Graulich, Gail Griffin, Dolan Hubbard, Kendall, Susan Koppelman, Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Linda Robertson, Carol Taylor, Jane Tompkins, Cheryl Torsney, Trace Yamamoto, Frances Murphy Zauhar
Show moreAcknowledgments vii
Introduction / Diane P. Freedman, Olivia Frey, and Francis Murphy
Zauhar 1
Part 1. Muse-ings on Genre, Autobiography, Narrative: Formative
Strategies
Border Crossing as Method and Motif in Contemporary American
Writing, or, How Freud Helped Me Case the Joint / Diane P. Freedman
13
Me and My Shadow / Jane Tompkins 23
Beyond Literary Darwinism: Women's Voices and Critical Discourse /
Olivia Frey 41
"Everyday Life": My Sojourn at Parchman Farm / Cheryl B. Torsney
67
Excerpts from Letters to Friends / Susan Koppelman 75
Social Circles: Being a Report on J. Hills Miller's Campus
Visitation / Linda R. Robertson 81
Touchstones and Bedrocks: Learning the Stories We Need / Victoria
Ekanger 93
Part II. Critical Confessions
Creative Voices: Women Reading and Women's Writing / Frances Murphy
Zauhar 103
Breaking Silence: The Woman Warrior / Shirley Nelson Garner 117
Different Silences / Traise Yamamoto 127
"What's in a Name?": Some Meanings of Blackness / Henry Louis
Gates, Jr. 135
Poetry and the Age: "A Girl in a Library" to Randall Jarrell /
Sandra M. Brown 151
My Friend, Joyce Carol Oates / Brenda Daly 163
Somebody Must Say These Things: An Essay for My Mother / Melody
Graulich 175
The Scarlet Brewer and the Voice of the Colonized / Shirley
Geok-lin Lim 191
Dividing Fences / Carol S. Taylor 197
What Do Women Really Mean? Thoughts on Women's Diaries and Lives /
Suzanne Bunkers 207
Part III. Autobiographical Literary Criticism
Between the Medusa and the Abyss: Reading Jane Eyre, Reading Myself
/ Ellen Brown 225
Rereading Middlemarch, Rereading Myself / Peter Carlton 237
The Crippling of the Third World: Shiva Naipaul's Heritage /
Rosanne Kanhai-Brunton 225
Penelope's Web / Gail Griffin 255
"Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around!": Reading the Narrative of
Frederick Douglass / Dolan Hubbard 265
Catharine Trotter Cockburn and Me: A Duography / Kendall 273
In Between Abject and Object: The Mourning Sickness of the
Expectant Mother, or, Three Movements of the Blues in B Minor /
Dana Beckelman 283
La Ronde of Children and Mothers / Julia Balen 293
Selected Bibliography 303
Contributors 309
Diane P. Freedman, Assistant Professor of English at University of New Hampshire, is the author of An Alchemy of Genres: Cross-Genre Writing by American Women Poet Critics.
Olivia Frey is Associate Professor of English and Director of Women's Studies at St. Olaf College.
Frances Murphy Zauhar is Assistant Professor of English at St. Vincent College.
"The Intimate Critique marks the coming out of a new critical
genre, sure to generate controversy, pleasure, rage, support,
disbelief, acclaim (i.e., strong reactions!) among its
readers."—Alice Kaplan, author of French Lessons: A Memoir
"Grouped together, these very different essays raise and respond to
a question that feminist theorists continue to ask—about the extent
to which individual experience and self-expression may be read as
representative."—Rachel M. Brownstein, author of Becoming a
Heroine: Reading About Women in Novels
"This book goes a long way toward breathing life into literary
criticism, advancing the necessary effort to write about it in a
personal, engaged, and interesting manner."—G. Douglas Atkins,
University of Kansas
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