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Women, Literature and Culture in the Portuguese-Speaking World

Author: 
Year:
Pages:210
ISBN:0-7734-8805-7
978-0-7734-8805-2
Price:$179.95
This collection of essays encompasses for the first time in a single volume articles on Portugal, Brazil, Angola and Cape Verde. An introductory section examines the changing roles of women since the nineteenth century in the context of Portuguese culture. Subsequent sections include both discussions of representations of women in the works of well-known male writers such as Machado de Assis and Juandino Vieira, as well as exciting new readings of several prominent women writers such as Florbela Esparica, Clarice Lispector and Maria Velho de Costa, among others. Several of the contributors draw on current feminist research and on insights from psychoanalytical and poststructuralist analyses. This wide range of critical approaches ensures that this volume fills a gap in Lusophone studies, casting new light on the recent history of women as cultural agents in Portuguese-speaking countries.

Reviews

"As a whole, the collection testifies to the remarkable evolution that women's lot has undergone in Portugal and Brazil in little more than a century; lusophone Africa's story is, of course, radically different. . . . the articles included . . . give the reader a glimmer of the wealth of this writing and of a patriarchy that continues to exist but is more and more vulnerable to the skillful strategies used to combat it. . . .It is a sound contribution to the belated but growing scholarship in its field." - World Literature Today

"Critical pluralism is a very positive aspect of this collection of papers. . . . represents an active dialogue in gender issues. It contains a fairly wide range of viewpoints some of which provide valuable insight into women studies in general as well as in the more specific context of the Portuguese-speaking world." - International Journal of Iberian Studies