Feminine Discourse as an Object and Subject of Literary Criticism

• Main Author: Svetlana Yuryevna Vorobyova
• Format: Article
• Language: Russian
• Published: Ural Federal University Press 2016-03-01
• Series: Известия Уральского федерального университета. Серия 2: Гуманитарные науки
• Subjects: автор; дискурс; гендер; маскулинность; феминность; критика; стереотип; текст.
• Online Access: https://journals.urfu.ru/index.php/Izvestia2/article/view/1928
• ISSN: 2227-2283; 2587-6929

The article analyzes the literary criticism devoted to works by women authors, and formulates the reasons for their conflicting assessments, on the one hand, resulting from the gender disparity between the mental background of male critics and the specific content of female texts that requires a special approach, whose methods are still being developed; on the other hand, an excessively straightforward feminist criticism, focusing on the social, but not the discursive issues of their creative work. Such an inconsistency is cognitive in nature and can be overcome only by means of an understanding both by the critic, and the author of the difference in meaning generation in texts by authors of different genders, otherwise it impedes an adequate assessment of “female” works in the process of critical analysis, and also leads to an inadequate understanding of the female author’s intentions, seeking to express specific information that is difficult to “read” with the help of traditional methods. Being specifically codified, the gender discourse demands that special attention be paid by the critic who needs to be ready for a conversational approach to be able to decode “female” texts. The article concludes that the gender approach to facts provided by literary and critical reflection, provides an insight into the processes of redistribution of forces in the field of power that are mainly represented by discursive rather than content-related methods.