美国女权主义批评家把女性写作作为一个专门的研究领域,形成了对于不同民族和历史时期的女性文学的发现与重读。伊莱恩·肖沃尔特及时对女权主义文学批评进行了总结。她提出,“女权主义批评的第二阶段就是发现女性作家有她们自己的文学,其艺术的重要性及历史和主题的连贯性,均被我们文化中占主导地位的男性价值观所湮没 这一时期以女权主义视角来定义女性作品的重要著作有帕特丽夏·迈耶· 斯帕克斯(Patricia Meyer Spacks)的《女性想象》(The Female Imagination, 1975)、 埃伦·莫尔 (Ellen Moers) 的《文学女性》(Literary Women, 1976)、肖沃尔特的《她们自己的文学》(A Literature of Their Own, 1977)和桑德拉·M.吉尔伯特 (Sandra M. Gilbert)与苏珊·古芭 (Susan Gubar)合著的《阁楼上的疯女人:女性作家与19世纪的文学想象》(The Madwoman in the Attic, 1979)。斯帕克斯指出女性作品被忽视的事实及女性作品与男性作品的差异;莫尔强调了作为文学主流之外的女性自己的文学;肖沃尔特总结了女性文学的发展过程,并且将女性文学划分成 “女性特征的、女权的和女人的”三个阶段;吉尔伯特和古芭则试图创立一种关于19世纪女性作家创作处境的理论叙述。经过这些女权评论家的努力,到20世纪70年代末,一种关于女性文学传统的叙事已经形成,这个叙事描绘了女性写作在过去200多年里从模仿、抗争到自我定义的发展过程,界定和追溯了在男性统治的文化里女性所创作的意象、主题和情节。
Patricia Meyer Spacks, who will receive a Doctor of Humane Letters, has published numerous books and essays on literary criticism, novelists, poets, and aspects of culture, including The Poetry of Vision; The Female Imagination; Desire and Truth: Functions of Plot in Eighteenth-Century English Novels; Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind; Privacy: Concealing the Eighteenth-Century Self; and, published this year, Novel Beginnings: Experiments in Eighteenth-Century English Fiction.
Spacks is an active member of professional and honorary societies and has been president of the Modern Language Association, chair of the board of directors of the American Council of Learned Societies, a member of the board of trustees of the National Humanities Center, and most recently, vice president, then president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has received many honors, including the Francis Andrew March Award for service to the profession and fellowships from the American Association of University Women, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Humanities Institute. Spacks was elected to the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where she served as the first humanities scholar-in-residence.
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