EL DISCURSO SUBVERSIVO DE PATRICIA ESTEBAN ERLÉS EN EL CONTEXTO DE LO FANTÁSTICO FEMINISTA

La poética fantástica de Patricia Esteban Erlés (Zaragoza, 1972) constituye una contestación al ideario conservador asumido por nuestro imaginario cultural. Así lo demuestran características relativas a la selección y el tratamiento de los personajes, la temática, la construcción y la significación del espacio narrativo, el modo de abordar la monstruosidad derivada de la realidad sexista, las propuestas formales y la apuesta por el hibridismo genérico. Su análisis estará imbricado con reflexiones sobre la consolidación de esta línea de lo fantástico feminista en las últimas décadas en el ámbito de la narrativa en español y sobre la posible existencia de un canon de autoras, tanto en español como en otras lenguas, que haya podido influir en esa fragua de lo fantástico escrito por mujeres con una clara perspectiva política, en la que lo no mimético se convierte en una herramienta ideológica de denuncia social y genérica. Abstract: Born Zaragoza, 1972, Patricia Esteban Erlés’s poetics of fantastic represents a contestation to the conservative ideology assumed by our cultural imaginary. This is demonstrated by some characteristics related to the selection and treatment of characters, the subject, the construction and the signification of the narrative space, the approach to monstrosity as derived from sexist reality, the formal proposals and the inclination towards generic hybridism. Its analysis will be interweaved with reflections on the consolidation of this trend of the feminist fantastic in the last decades in the Spanish narrative panorama and the possible existence of a female writers canon, both in Spanish and other languages, that could have influenced the forging of the fantastic written by women with a clear political perspective in which non-mimetic genres have become an ideological tool for gender and social denunciation.

O lugar da literatura monástica feminina no cânone Barroco português

Women’s Monastic Writing within the Portuguese Baroque Canon. This article aims to approach Portuguese female monastic literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in terms of its relationship with the Baroque literary canon. Shaped at the border that separates voice and silence, the visible and the spiritual universe, the cult of moderation and the desire to assert, this literature outlined a new type of discourse, which hinted at the intense conflict between suppression and authority, which, in turn, gave rise to a permanent dialogue between the feminine ethos, the controversial character of the Baroque and the always oscillating essence of the canon. We will show, that, during the last centuries, the works of some famous female writers, such as Sóror Maria do Céu, Sóror Violante do Céu and Sóror Madalena da Glória, or of other female authors who remained in the shadows, have been differently and unequally absorbed by literary critics and historians and by great anthologists. Their writings have not ceased to be represented as preferential places of dispute, of the uninterrupted dialogue between silence and affirmation, between center and margin, which generally regulates the literary canon. Keywords: monastic, literature, feminine, canon, Baroque

Identity and Writing: the Case of Eastern Sephardic Women

Access to written culture, which began to be widespread among Sephardic women in the former Ottoman Empire at the end of the nineteenth century, opens a new perspective in gender studies of the Jewish minority in Muslim societies. Writing constitutes one of the main vehicles through which individuals appropriate their own identity and culture. In this sense, female Eastern Sephardic writers represent a fascinating example of how a cultural minority elaborates its consciousness and the awareness of its past. This article deals with this specific issue: the way that both the first Sephardic female writers and those who followed were able to elaborate a new identity through the act of writing and the awareness of its multiple possibilities. The first Sephardic female writers (Reina Hakohén, Rosa Gabay and Laura Papo) show us their contradictions: the identification with the traditional roles of women, the continuous justifications of their work as writers, the redefinition of what means to be a female writer in the context of Eastern Sephardic societies.

Sabah Feminist Novelists: Views of Their Own

This paper scrutinizes five award-winning novels by five Sabah female writers and the issues of sexual discrimination, lack of opportunities, patriarchal hegemony and the negative perceptions of the body that plague Sabah Malay women. A discursive analysis of these issues is anchored upon a gynocritic feminist approach first introduced by Elaine Showalter in her famous essay entitled "Toward a Feminist Poetics" (Newton, 1997). The purpose of this study is to uncover the concept of the feminine "self" in the Sabah context through a thirty-year interrogation represented by these five female authors' novels and narrative styles, which include an exploration of their themes, language styles and poetics through the five novels entitled Malisiah by Obasiah Hj Usman (1986), Dari dalam Cermin by Azmah Nordin (1992), Gadis Adikara by Ruhaini Matdarin (2007), Pagi di Hujung Senja by Kathirina Susanna Tati (2013) and Helaian Linangkit by Dayangku Mastura Pg. Ismail (2016).

Tragic Victims of Mania a Potu (“Madness from Drink”): A Study of Literary Nineteenth-Century Female Drunkards

Temperance literature, though widely popular in America and Britain between 1830–80, lost its allure in the decades that followed. In spite of its didactic and moralistic nature, the public eagerly consumed temperance novels, thus reciprocating contemporaneous writers’ efforts to promote social ideals and mend social ills. The main aim of this paper is to redress the critical neglect that the temperance prose written by women about women has endured by looking at three literary works—two novellas and one confessional novelette—written by mid-nineteenth-century American female writers. These works serve as a prism through which the authors present generally “tabooed” afflictions such as inebriation among high-class women and society’s role in perpetuating such behaviors. The essay examines the conflicting forces underlying such representations and offers an inquiry into the restrictive and hostile social climate in mid-nineteenth-century America and the lack of medical attention given to alcohol addicts as the possible causes that might have prompted women’s dangerous behaviors, including inebriation. This paper also demonstrates the cautious approach that nineteenth-century female writers had to take when dealing with prevalent social ills, such as bigotry, hypocrisy and disdain directed at female drunkards. It shows how these writers, often sneered at or belittled by critics and editors, had to maneuver very carefully between the contending forces of openly critiquing social mores, on the one hand, and not being censored, on the other.

Female characters in Kenyan women’s short story: From submission to self-reliance

The article analyses the depiction of new types of female characters in the stories by Kenyan female writers published from 2003 to 2012 in literary almanacs Kwani? and Storymoja. The author traces the evolution of female characters from the “victim” type, which appeared in Kenyan women’s literature already in the 1960s, to its modern alternatives – women advocating their rights in all spheres of private and public life.

Oppression towards Women as Depicted in Marge Piercy’s Selected Poems

This present study would like to examine how women are oppressed by the patriarchal society in the selected poems written by one of the contemporary American female writers, Marge Piercy. Marge Piercy is particularly known as a female writer as well as a feminist activist. She has written numerous works, including novels and poetry books, which explore issues about women. Piercy’s poems are mostly known to be simple and vivid. Observing the use of figurative language and the diction in Piercy’s selected poems, entitled “A Work of Artifice” and “Barbie Doll”, in the light of feminist criticism, this article would like to show how oppression is done towards women and how it results in the silencing, shaping, and subordinating of women. In the poems, the oppression is mostly operated subtly and systematically through various cultural institutions, such as education, family, and media. Women, as a result, are trained to believe in the voice of the patriarchal society and to behave following what the patriarchal society demands. The long-practiced oppression has hindered women to develop to their fullest as human beings. The poems can be read as a medium to voice women’s experiences and to criticize the established patriarchal system and its oppression towards women.

Grotesque in The Vey Short stories of Palestinian Female Writers

This research aims to study the application of the Grotesque technique on the characters of the very short story written by Palestinian female writers. The study includes three examples of very short stories by Palestinian female writers from different sectors: Israel, West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the diaspora. It attempts to find the connection between the grotesque reality that emerged after the war in 1948 and its effects and changes in society, politics and economics. Therefore, we will monitor the topics written by Palestinian female writers in the very short story because of the preferences that this genre achieves that do not exist in other literary genres such as reduction, brevity, intensification. We reveal the extent to which the Grotesque technique is used to express marginalized feminist issues, and to find similarities and differences between stories in the application of the Grotesque technique on the characters. We found That the Grotesque technique used in the stories to distort the contours of the characters. The characters do not behave as normal but are somewhat willful, and act as a mechanism. The character of the woman is absent and invisible and her voice is inaudible. Women's personality in various situations is a negative recipient.

Reservations Chronicle: The Interplay of Real and Imaginary Places in Louise Erdrich's Tracks

Spatiality occupies pivotal status in the thematic orientation of Native American literature. Native American male writers in general and female writers, in particular consider the issues of space and place with reference to issues of identity, separation and conflict with Euro-Americans. The present paper aims to study the portrayal of real and imaginary places in Louise Erdrich's Tracks. The study maintains that Erdrich infuses energy into the places portrayed in the novel. Hence, places do not remain static or flat rather; they assume dynamic characteristics that not only trigger action but also become a character in the development of the plot. The present study concludes that textual and imagined places should not be taken as mere portrayals of topographic structures; rather, they explain the socio-cultural paradigm of a given social order.