Ellen Moers
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 | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1928 |
| Died | 1979 |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | literary critic |
| Known for | gynocriticism |
| Notable work | Literary Women (1976) |
Feminist breakthrough
After two exact but conventional 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
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]
References
- Ellen Moers
- J. Childers ed., The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism (1996) p. 129
- S. Wolstenholme, Gothic (Re)Visions (1993) p. 157
- Toril Moi, Sexual/textual Politics (2002) p. 53–4
- S. Hawkins, The British Pop Dandy (2009) p. 2–6
- S. Markovitch, The Crisis of Action in Nineteenth-Century English Literature (2006) p. 162
- P. Giles, American Catholic Arts and Fictions p. 151