The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy
by Gerda Lerner
Women and History (2)
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"A pioneer in women's studies and long-term activist for women's issues, and a past president of the Organization of American Historians, Gerda Lerner is one of the founders and foremost scholars of Women's History. The Creation of Patriarchy, the first book in her two-volume Women and History Series (1986) received wide review attention and much acclaim, winning the prestigious Joan Kelly Prize of the American Historical Association for the best work on Women's History that year. Ms. hailed show more the book for providing "a grand historical framework that was impossible even to imagine before the enlightenment about women's place in the world provided by her earlier work and that of other feminist scholars." New Directions for Women said it "may well be the most important work in feminist theory to appear in our generation."" "Patriarchy traced the development of the ideas, symbols, and metaphors by which men institutionalized their domination of women. Now, in The Creation of Feminist Consciousness, the eagerly awaited concluding volume of the Women and History Series, Lerner documents the twelve-hundred-year struggle of women to free their minds from patriarchal thought, to create Women's History, and to achieve a feminist consciousness. Lerner argues that the millennia-old educational disadvantaging of women and their marginalization in the intellectual life of Western civilization retarded women's ability to comprehend their condition and to define their needs as a group. She shows the devastating impact on women's psychology of notions of their innate mental inferiority, reinforced generation after generation by the teachings of family, church, and state. Through examining over a thousand years of feminist biblical criticism, Lerner illustrates her most important insight - the discontinuity of Women's History. The generation to generation transmission of knowledge on which the building of civilization rests did not work for women. Because they did not know its history, each generation of women used their energies and talents reinventing ideas that other women had already defined - this greatly delayed the development of women's consciousness of themselves as members of a group. In a series of fascinating portraits of individual women who resisted patriarchal indoctrination, Lerner discusses women mystics such as Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, and later Protestant mystics, and brings to life the many women of great literary talent, from Christine de Pisan to Louise Labe to Emily Dickinson, who simply bypassed patriarchal thought and created alternate worlds for themselves." "In its emphasis on the force of ideas, the struggle of women for inclusion in the concept of the Divine, the repeated attempts by women to form supportive networks, and its analysis of the preconditions for the formation of political theories of liberation, this brilliant work charts new ground for historical studies, the history of ideas, and feminist theory."--Jacket. show lessTags
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En La creación de la conciencia feminista, Gerda Lerner complementa La creación del patriarcado, documentando doce siglos de conflicto en los que las mujeres pelearon por liberar sus mentes del pensamiento patriarcal y por construir una conciencia feminista. En definitiva, como la propia autora dice, por crear la Historia de las mujeres.
Con una narrativa rica en ejemplos e ilustrada con retratos de autoras, Lerner traza una lÃnea desde la Edad Media hasta el siglo XIX, mostrando distintas vÃas por las que las mujeres han luchado por su autonomÃa y por tener una voz propia. Hildegarda de Bingen, Juliana de Norwich, las tardÃas mÃsticas protestantes y otras grandes literatas, desde Christine de Pisan hasta Emily Dickinson, todas show more ellas tuvieron que hacer frente a la falta de una genealogÃa de autoras teniendo que «inventar la rueda» en cada desarrollo intelectual. show less
Con una narrativa rica en ejemplos e ilustrada con retratos de autoras, Lerner traza una lÃnea desde la Edad Media hasta el siglo XIX, mostrando distintas vÃas por las que las mujeres han luchado por su autonomÃa y por tener una voz propia. Hildegarda de Bingen, Juliana de Norwich, las tardÃas mÃsticas protestantes y otras grandes literatas, desde Christine de Pisan hasta Emily Dickinson, todas show more ellas tuvieron que hacer frente a la falta de una genealogÃa de autoras teniendo que «inventar la rueda» en cada desarrollo intelectual. show less
Nov 26, 2019Spanish
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19+ Works 2,201 Members
Gerda Lerner, Robinson-Edwards Professor of History, Emerita, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is also a past president of the Organization of American Historians and a founding member of the National Organization for Women (NOW), as well as one of the creators of Women's History Month
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, Sexuality and Gender Studies, History, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 305.42 — Social sciences Social sciences, sociology & anthropology Groups of people Women Social role and status of women
- LCC
- HQ1121 .L47 — Social sciences The family. Marriage, Women and Sexuality The Family. Marriage. Women Women. Feminism
- BISAC
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- 422
- Popularity
- 72,771
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (4.20)
- Languages
- English, German, Portuguese, Spanish
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 8
- ASINs
- 3
