Title: The erotics of talk
First published: 1996
Description: In this provocative rereading of the classic texts of the feminist literary canon, Carla Kaplan takes a hard look at the legacy of feminist criticism and argues that important features of feminism's own canon have been overlooked in the rush to rescue and identify.

African-American women's texts, she demonstrates, often dramatize their distrust of their readers, their lack of faith in "the cultural conversation," through strategies of self-silencing and "self-talk." At the same time, she argues, the homoerotics of women's writing has too often gone unremarked. Not only does longing for an ideal listener draw women's texts into a romance with the reader, but there is an erotic excess which is part of feminist critical recuperation, itself.

. Drawing on a wide range of resources, from sociolinguistics and anthropology to literary theory, Kaplan's highly readable study proposes a new model for understanding and representing "talk."
Subjects: Feminism and literature, Theory, Literary form, History and criticism, American literature, Women authors, Narration (Rhetoric), Women and literature, History, Jacobs, harriet a. (harriet ann), 1813-1897, Hurston, zora neale, 1901-1960, Bronte, charlotte, 1816-1855, American literature, women authors
Places: United States
People: Zora Neale Hurston, Harriet A. Jacobs (1813-1897), Alice Walker (1944-), Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855)
Time periods: 20th century
LC classification: PS147 .K37 1996