One of the most widely read feminist texts of the twentieth century, and Monique Wittig’s most popular novel, Les Guérillères imagines the attack on the language and bodies of men by a tribe of warrior women. Among the women’s most powerful weapons in their assault is laughter, but they also threaten literary and linguistic customs of the patriarchal order with bullets. In this breathtakingly rapid novel first published in 1969, Wittig animates a lesbian society that invites all women to join their fight, their circle, and their community. A path-breaking novel about creating and sustaining freedom, the book derives much of its energy from its vaunting of the female body as a resource for literary invention.

Is a woman's writing different from a man's? Many scholars -- and readers -- think so, even thought here has been little examination of the way women's novels enact the theories that women theorists have posited. In Jean Rhys and the Novel as Women's Text, Nancy Harrison makes an important contribution to the exchange of ideas on the writing practice of women and to the scholarship on Jean Rhys. Harrison determines what the form of a well-made women's novel discloses about the conditions of women's communication and the literary production that emerges from them. Devoting the first part of her book to theory and general commentary on Rhys's approach to writing, she then offers perceptive readings of Voyage in the Dark, an early Rhys novel, and Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys's masterpiece written twenty-seven years later. She shows how Rhys uses the terms of a man's discourse, then introduces a woman's (or several women's) discourse as a compelling counterpoint that, in time, becomes prominent and gives each novel its thematic impact. In presenting a continuing dialogue with the dominant language and at the same time making explicit the place of a woman's own language, Rhys gives us a paradigm for a new and basically moral text. Originally published in 1988. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

From Moby-Dick to The Unnamable, from A Tale of a Tub to The Book of Questions, Bruce Kawin explores the nature of self-conscious fiction and compares its structure to that of human consciousness. Focusing on texts that confront their own limits by trying to name the unnamable, the ineffable self, Kawin draws on methods from literary criticism to systems theory to explain a variety of first-person works that "dance around the ungraspable subject."

Monique Wittig, who died in January 2003, was a leading French feminist, social theorist, prose poet, and novelist--and an activist who helped start the lesbian and women's liberation movements in France. This collection of essays by Wittig and on her work is the first sustained examination in English of her broad-ranging political, literary, and theoretical viewpoints. On Monique Wittig contains twelve essays, representing French, Francophone, and U.S. critics, including three previously unpublished pieces by Wittig herself. Among the essays is Diane Griffin Crowder's discussion of the U.S. feminist movement, Linda Zerilli's consideration of gender and will, and Teresa de Lauretis's examination of the development of lesbian theory. Together, these essays situate Wittig's work in terms of the cultural contexts of its production and reception. This volume also contains the first authenticated chronology of Wittig's life and features the first translation of "For a Movement of Women's Liberation," which Wittig published with other "militantes" in May 1970. As the first book to appear on Wittig following her death, On Monique Wittig is an indispensable tool for feminist scholars.

What is the spark that lights the fire of learning between learner and teacher? This study uses action research and action learning to deepen the author's understanding and praxis.

An addition to the Theory and Interpretation of Narrative series, Peel's book addresses how feminist utopian narratives attempt to persuade readers to adopt certain beliefs. Using three feminist utopian novels as her main examples, The Marriages between Zones Three, Four, and Five by Doris Lessing; The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin; and Les Guérillères by Monique Wittig, Peel examines how belief-bridging and protean metaphor in these works persuade readers. Literary persuasion, often dismissed as propaganda, in fact works in subtle and profound ways. The book presents major techniques by which narrative literature exercises this sophisticated influence on beliefs. Ultimately concluding that the pragmatic works better than the static in utopian feminism, Peel shows how, in novels such as those under discussion, the narrative techniques support pragmatism. Inquiring how narrative form can shape political belief by affecting readers' responses, the author integrates topics that are rarely combined. The book investigates three theoretical issues: utopian belief, distinguishing the perfectionism of the static from the vitality of the pragmatic and showing how the latter creates narrative energy; the persuasive process, tracing narrative form and asking how implied readers match real ones and how readers are swayed by belief-bridging and protean metaphor; and feminist belief, a nuanced definition that accounts both for what links feminists and what makes them diverse. Politics, Persuasion, and Pragmatism explores the rhetorical and ethical power of narrative literature.