In Women’s Irony: Rewriting Feminist Rhetorical Histories, author Tarez Samra Graban synthesizes three decades of feminist scholarship in rhetoric, linguistics, and philosophy to present irony as a critical paradigm for feminist rhetorical historiography that is not linked to humor, lying, or intention. Using irony as a form of ideological disruption, this innovative approach allows scholars to challenge simplistic narratives of who harmed, and who was harmed, throughout rhetorical history. Three case studies of women’s political discourse between 1600 and 1900—examining the work of Anne Askew, Anne Hutchinson, and Helen M. Gougar—demonstrate how reading historical texts ironically complicates the theoretical relationships between women and agency, language and history, and archival location and memory. Interwoven throughout are shorter case studies from twentieth-century performances, revealing irony’s consciousness-raising potential for the present and the future. Ultimately, Women’s Irony suggests alternative ways to question women’s histories and consider how contemporary feminist discourse might be better historicized. Graban challenges critical methods in rhetoric, asking scholars in rhetoric and its related disciplines—composition, communication, and English studies—to rethink how they produce historical knowledge and use archives to recover women’s performances in political situations.

"Gardner's reading of a wide range of published and unpublished texts recovers a multifaceted vision of the South. For example, during the war, while its outcome was not yet a foregone conclusion, women's writings sometimes reflected loyalty and optimism; at other times, they revealed doubts and a wavering resolve. According to Gardner, it was only in the aftermath of defeat that a more unified vision of the southern cause emerged. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, white women - who remained deeply loyal to their southern roots - were raising fundamental questions about the meaning of southern womanhood in the modern era."--BOOK JACKET.

This is a book about how Molière, France's most celebrated author of comedies, made something strikingly new out of the traditional comedy plot of thwarted courtship. Though justly celebrated for his mastery of physical comedy and farce, one of Molière's key moves was to pay attention to the way women could use language. Seventeenth-century France was a time when speaking well became exceptionally important, and in this arena women were the trend-setters. Among the most important places to display taste and social skills were the salons, gatherings presided over by women. Yet women still enjoyed little in the way of rights, particularly regarding a central decision in their lives: the choice of a husband. French regulations of marriage contracts became increasingly restrictive, largely to the detriment of women. To draw attention to their plight, women novelists and essayists presented case studies in how men and women misunderstood one another, how women were coerced to wed, how marriages could become nightmares, and how courtships could fail. Against this fraught social background Molière showed women using one of the few assets they had, their mastery of words, and in particular the rhetoric of irony, to frustrate the plans of fathers, guardians, and other authority figures. The comedies discussed here include very well-known plays such as The Misanthrope, Tartuffe, The Learned Ladies, The School for Wives and Don Juan, and also less known but revealing and thought-provoking works such as The School for Husbands, George Dandin and Monsieur de Pourceaugnac.

This text explores the aesthetics, underlying logics, and histories of two seemingly distinct genres - liberal political satire and conservative opinion talk - making the case that they should be thought of as the logical extensions of the psychology of the left and right, respectively.

Ever fall for the lure of expensive, exotic moisturizers promising impossible anti-aging miracles? Ever receive one of those happy, sappy New Year's letters from someone you barely remember from fourth grade? Can't decide whether to stay friends with a size two woman who won't eat a carrot because of its high-carb content? If so, you're in good company. Award-winning humorist and Bikram yoga dropout Judy Gruen copes with all this and more in The Women's Daily Irony Supplement. Her riffs on female obsessions, motherhood, men, and why a woman's home is her hassle are candid, fresh, and surprisingly intimate. Reading these comic gems is guaranteed to improve the health of every woman, because laughter releases endorphins!

Modern Sentimentalism discusses how the iconic modern woman as presented in interwar American literature. It reveals how this literary figure carries the weight of sentiment and how the question of feminine feeling is central to modernism's preoccupations and styles.

Contemporary feminist theorists have implied a special affinity between women and irony because of their ‘double’ relation to the prevailing order of things: both speak from within this order while remaining ‘other’ to it in some way. Irony can be regarded as the obvious mode in which a feminist might speak, as it reflects her relation to the patriarchal structure while refusing to validate the truth of the current sexual hierarchy. She Changes by Intrigue undertakes the first sustained analysis of the parallels between irony, femininity and feminism. By retracing the association of these terms through canonical and contemporary continental philosophy, the book seeks to illuminate a notion of sexual agency that has until now remained shadowy, in spite of its prevalence. Examining the recurrence of the ‘ironic feminine’ in texts by Kristeva, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Irigaray, Derrida and Kofman, it argues that a radical revaluation of the legacy of patriarchal thought in feminism is necessary before irony can be embraced as a feminist strategy. In this context, She Changes by Intrigue offers a new reading of what it means to write as a feminist ‘subject’. This volume will be of interest to students and academics working in the fields of gender studies, continental philosophy and critical / cultural theory.