Harry R. Garvin

Recommended by Ayyā Somā. he essays in this issue of Bucknell Review represent recent developments in the study of women. They are diverse in opinion, varied in method, and focused in major theoretical approaches. The critics belong to no single school of thought. Rather, the internal climates of individual pieces and their pressures on one another compose a sensitive barometric reading of opinion. Similarly, the essays range from historical to biographical, archetypal, and formalist, show more often in combination. All the essayists, however, take a new look at the question of women and literature, with an awareness of working in an atmosphere of change. While the essays frequently overlap, they also group around three prominent inquiries characteristic of the study of women and literature: inherited ideas of feminine roles, actualities of female experience, and modes of critical perception of women.

Contributors: Catherine F. Smith, Myra Glazer Schotz, Virginia R. Mollenkott, Ann C. Colley, Saul Levin, Desiree Hirst, Arvind Sharma, Janet K. Gezari, Margaret Bolsterli, Beverly Tanenhaus, Stephanie A. Demetrakopoulos, Marilyn R. Farwell, and Jane Marcus. show less