Ellen Moers (1928–1979[1]) was an American academic and literary scholar. She is best known for her pioneering contribution to gynocriticism, Literary Women (1976).[2]

Ellen Moers
Born1928
Died1979
NationalityAmerican
Occupationliterary critic
Known forgynocriticism
Notable workLiterary Women (1976)

Feminist breakthrough

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After two exact but conventional[citation needed] books (on the dandy and on Theodore Dreiser), Moers was caught up by Second-wave feminism, which she credits with "pulling me out of the stacks"[1] and leading her to write Literary Women. In the latter she established the existence of a strong nineteenth-century tradition of (international) women writers—her identification within it of what she called 'female Gothic' proving especially influential.[3]

In the fast-moving world of feminist scholarship, her book would be challenged in the following decade as under-theorised and ethnocentric; but continued nonetheless to serve as a significant stepping-stone for future scholarship.[4]

Twin traditions

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Moers pointed to the ambiguous origins of the dandy, in a merger of French and English traditions;[5] to the paradox in the dandy's highly structured pose of inaction; and to the role of the female dandy.[6]

She indicated Dreiser's twin role on the cusp between 19th-century realism and 20th-century realism, as well as his roots in the different religious traditions of Catholicism and Protestantism.[7]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b Ellen Moers
  2. ^ J. Childers ed., The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism (1996) p. 129
  3. ^ S. Wolstenholme, Gothic (Re)Visions (1993) p. 157
  4. ^ Toril Moi, Sexual/textual Politics (2002) p. 53–4
  5. ^ S. Hawkins, The British Pop Dandy (2009) p. 2–6
  6. ^ S. Markovitch, The Crisis of Action in Nineteenth-Century English Literature (2006) p. 162
  7. ^ P. Giles, American Catholic Arts and Fictions p. 151
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