Feminist revisionist mythology is

feminist literature Feminist literature is fiction, nonfiction, drama, or poetry, which supports the feminist goals of defining, establishing, and defending equal civil, political, economic, and social rights for women. It often identifies women's roles as unequal ...

informed by

feminist literary criticism Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or more broadly, by the politics of feminism. It uses the principles and ideology of feminism to critique the language of literature. This school of thought seeks to an ...

, or by the politics of

feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

more broadly and that engages with

mythology Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narra ...

, fairy tales,

religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...

, or other areas.

Overview

Lisa Tuttle Lisa Gracia Tuttle (born September 16, 1952) is an American-born science fiction, fantasy, and horror author. She has published more than a dozen novels, seven short story collections, and several non-fiction titles, including a reference book o ...

has defined feminist theory as asking "new questions of old texts".Tuttle, Lisa. ''Encyclopedia of Feminism''. Harlow: Longman 1986, p. 184. She cites the goals of feminist criticism as (1) developing and uncovering a female tradition of writing, (2) interpreting symbolism of women's writing so that it will not be lost or ignored by the male point of view, (3) rediscovering old texts, (4) analyzing women writers and their writings from a female perspective, (5) resisting sexism in literature, and (6) increasing awareness of the sexual politics of language and style. Feminist revisionist mythology tends to fulfill at least one of these goals. Instead of just studying prior works though, it is the revision of old texts to create new ones. Revision Mythmaking is a strategic revisionist use of

gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures ...

imagery and is a means of exploring and attempting to transform the self and the culture or, in other words, to "subvert and transform the life and literature women poets inherit".

Alicia Ostriker Alicia Suskin Ostriker (born November 11, 1937) is an American poet and scholar who writes Jewish feminist poetry.Powell C.S. (1994) ''Profile: Jeremiah and Alicia Ostriker – A Marriage of Science and Art'', Scientific American 271(3), 28-3 ...

states in her essay " Stealing the Language" that "we cannot measure the work of women poets, past or present, without a thorough--and if possible demystified-- awareness of the critical context in which they have composed and continued to compose their work. We need to recognize that our customary literary language is systematically gendered in ways that influence what we approve and disapprove of, making it extremely difficult for us to acknowledge certain kinds of originality--of difference--in women poets". "The belief that true poetry is genderless—which is a disguised form of believing that true poetry is masculine—means that we have not learned to see women poets generically, to recognize the tradition they belong to, or discuss either the limitation or the strengths of that tradition".

Methods

Authors have used multiple methods of revising myths, including retelling them entirely from the point of view of the main female character, recreating the story in a way that attempts to break down the treatment of women as inactive objects, and telling the story with a feminist narrator who satirically pokes fun at the flawed view of women in the original text. "Fables are centuries old and were devised to carry a moral lesson, such as

Aesop's Fables Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Of diverse origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to ...

Suniti Namjoshi Suniti Namjoshi (born 1941 in Mumbai, India) is a poet and a fabulist. She grew up in India, worked in Canada and at present lives in the southwest of England with English writer Gillian Hanscombe. Her work is playful, inventive and often chall ...

's eloquent and knowledgeable 'Blue Donkey' stories draw on this classic tradition of having beasts or mythical birds able to speak and act like humans but the 'Blue Donkey' provides ironic comment rather than a moral lesson. Angela Carter has rewritten fairy tales from the point of view of the heroine. In her collection, ''The Bloody Chamber'', she examines the messages about adolescent sexuality in stories like 'Beauty and the Beast' and 'Snow White' overturning the sexual mythology of simple fairy stories." Since the core of revisionist mythmaking for feminist poets lies in the challenging of

gender stereotypes A gender role, also known as a sex role, is a social role encompassing a range of behaviors and attitudes that are generally considered acceptable, appropriate, or desirable for a person based on that person's sex. Gender roles are usually cent ...

embodied in myth, revisionism in its most obvious form consists of hit-and-run attacks on familiar images and the social and literary conventions supporting them. The poems dismantle the literary convention to reveal the social ones and invert both, usually by the simple device of making "the Other" into the primary subject.

Authors and artists of feminist revisionist mythology

Angela Carter Angela Olive Pearce (formerly Carter, Stalker; 7 May 1940 – 16 February 1992), who published under the name Angela Carter, was an English novelist, short story writer, poet, and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picar ...

* Carole P Christ *

Anne Sexton Anne Sexton (born Anne Gray Harvey; November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974) was an American poet known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book '' Live or Die''. Her poetry details ...

Carol Ann Duffy Dame Carol Ann Duffy (born 23 December 1955) is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is a professor of contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Poet Laureate in May 2009, resigning in 2019. She was the first ...

Duffy, Carol Ann. 1999. ''The World's Wife''. London: Picador. . * Margaret Atwood *

Madeline Miller Madeline Miller (born July 24, 1978) is an American novelist, author of ''The Song of Achilles'' (2011) and ''Circe'' (2018). Miller spent ten years writing ''The Song of Achilles'' while she worked as a teacher of Latin and Greek. The novel tell ...

Pat Barker Patricia Mary W. Barker, (née Drake; born 8 May 1943) is an English writer and novelist. She has won many awards for her fiction, which centres on themes of memory, trauma, survival and recovery. Her work is described as direct, blunt and pl ...

Muriel Rukeyser Muriel Rukeyser (December 15, 1913 – February 12, 1980) was an American poet and political activist, best known for her poems about equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism. Kenneth Rexroth said that she was the greatest poet of her "e ...

* Alta *

Marija Gimbutas Marija Gimbutas ( lt, Marija Gimbutienė, ; January 23, 1921 – February 2, 1994) was a Lithuanian archaeologist and anthropologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of " Old Europe" and for her Kurgan hypothesis ...

Louise Glück Louise Elisabeth Glück ( ; born April 22, 1943) is an American poet and essayist. She won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, whose judges praised "her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal". H ...

Paula Gunn Allen Paula Gunn Allen (October 24, 1939 – May 29, 2008) was a Native American poet, literary critic, activist, professor, and novelist. Of mixed-race European-American, Native American, and Arab-American descent, she identified with her mother's p ...

Mona Van Duyn Mona Jane Van Duyn (May 9, 1921 – December 2, 2004) was an American poet. She was appointed United States Poet Laureate in 1992. Biography Early years Van Duyn was born May 9, 1921 in Waterloo, Iowa."Van Duyn, Mona (1921–2004)." '' Dictio ...

June Jordan June Millicent Jordan (July 9, 1936 – June 14, 2002) was an American poet, essayist, teacher, and activist. In her writing she explored issues of gender, race, immigration, and representation. Jordan was passionate about using Black English ...

Adrienne Rich Adrienne Cecile Rich ( ; May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the ...

Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath (; October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, '' Th ...

Clarissa Pinkola Estés Clarissa Pinkola Estés (born January 27, 1945) is a first-generation American writer and Jungian psychoanalyst. She is the author of '' Women Who Run with the Wolves'' (1992), which remained on the ''New York Times'' bestseller list for 145 wee ...

Emma Lazarus Emma Lazarus (July 22, 1849 – November 19, 1887) was an American author of poetry, prose, and translations, as well as an activist for Jewish and Georgist causes. She is remembered for writing the sonnet " The New Colossus", which was inspire ...

Luisah Teish Luisah Teish ( ; also known as Iyanifa Fajembola Fatunmise) is a teacher and an author, most notably of ''Jambalaya: The Natural Woman's Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals.''Casey, Laura. "There's magic between plants, food and beauty" ...

Barbara Tedlock Barbara Helen Tedlock (born September 9, 1942) is an American cultural anthropologist and Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York, Buffalo. Her work explores cross-cultural understanding and communication of d ...

Mary Shelley Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel '' Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also ...

Starhawk Starhawk (born Miriam Simos on June 17, 1951) is an American feminist and author. She is known as a theorist of feminist Neopaganism and ecofeminism. In 2013, she was listed in Watkins' ''Mind Body Spirit'' magazine as one of the 100 Most Spir ...

Merlin Stone Merlin Stone (born Marilyn Jacobson, September 27, 1931 – February 23, 2011) was an American author, artist and academic. She was an important thinker of the feminist theology and Goddess movements and is known for her book ''When God Was a ...

Marion Zimmer Bradley Marion Eleanor Zimmer Bradley (June 3, 1930 – September 25, 1999) was an American author of fantasy, historical fantasy, science fiction, and science fantasy novels, and is best known for the Arthurian fiction novel ''The Mists of Avalon'' an ...

Gloria Anzaldúa Gloria may refer to: Arts and entertainment Music Christian liturgy and music * Gloria in excelsis Deo, the Greater Doxology, a hymn of praise * Gloria Patri, the Lesser Doxology, a short hymn of praise ** Gloria (Handel) ** Gloria (Jenkin ...

Chris Wind

Related works

* '' Proserpine'' (1820), by Mary and Percy Byshe Shelley * '' The Speed of Darkness'' (1960), by

* '' To Bedlam and Part Way Back'' (1960), by

* '' All My Pretty Ones'' (1962), by Anne Sexton * '' Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law'' (1963), by

* ''

Ariel Ariel may refer to: Film and television *Ariel Award, a Mexican Academy of Film award * ''Ariel'' (film), a 1988 Finnish film by Aki Kaurismäki * ''ARIEL Visual'' and ''ARIEL Deluxe'', 1989 and 1991 anime video series based on the novel series ...

'' (1965), by Sylvia Plath * '' Motherpeace Tarot'' * ''

The Bloody Chamber ''The Bloody Chamber'' (or ''The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories'') is a collection of short fiction by English writer Angela Carter. It was first published in the United Kingdom in 1979 by Gollancz and won the Cheltenham Festival Literary ...

'' (1979), by

Notes

References